


9

by Chromat1cs



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Artist!Sirius, M/M, Musician!Remus, Professor!Remus, Sexual Content, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-10
Updated: 2017-11-06
Packaged: 2018-10-30 04:57:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 64,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10869573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chromat1cs/pseuds/Chromat1cs
Summary: When crippling loss makes it harder and harder to get out of bed each morning, Sirius comes across a man with a guitar and a voice that lightens the grey scrim over life just enough to matter. ((playlist link included in author's notes))





	1. Verse 1 - Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Nightmares make it difficult to keep waking up, but even just one new bright spot would help.

Regulus was looking at him again with that burning anger that felt like ashes in his blood.

“I’m sick of arguing with you,” he snarled, standing taut as steel cable but not making a move to leave the wide, empty flat.

“Why the fuck did you come ‘round then, Reg? Just to insult me again?” Sirius scoffed and tasted tragedy in the back of his mouth. “God knows I got enough of it at home, don’t know why you thought I needed a fresh dose.”

“It always turns into fucking combat with you!” Regulus shouted, and Sirius could swear his voice echoed off of the stark walls in a tenfold battery until it swelled to a brief and violent roar. It faded in the short silence between them and left a vague buzz in his ears until Regulus continued; “All I wanted to hear from you was a fucking explanation, some sort of substance, but all you have to say is ‘I’ve made my choice,’ like a broken fucking record.”

“But I _have_ made—”

“Well it was the wrong one!” Again his brother’s voice swallowed Sirius like a vat of white noise, and Sirius felt his skin tingling in its absence when the air was left ringing with the tail of the shout.

“I needed to get away from them for good,” Sirius finally whispered, finding his voice constricted and too-small for anything louder when he made to speak. “You of all people should know that.”

“They fucked me up just as badly, Sirius,” Regulus spat in response. Sirius closed his eyes against the flash of crimson pain his name in his brother’s voice caused just beneath his eyelashes. “But I’m not the coward who can just hide behind Uncle Alford’s money forever.”

“What is this about, the fucking bank account? He put it in my name, Reg, I didn’t ask him to do that for me! He was completely batshit towards the end there, the will reading was news to me as well! What the fuck do you have to say to that?” Sirius barreled through his explanation, rehearsed in the theatre at the back of his mind incessantly for weeks, even though it made his teeth shoot with pain to bring the words to life now. It hurt further still to see Regulus now rendered silent, without a rebuttal and still smoldering with aimless rage. Sirius would never admit it, but it was harder to see his brother defeated than to see him directly furious at Sirius.

It suddenly became clear for him, in the gasp of a moment, that none of Regulus’ earth-rending anger from the past month had been at Sirius but at the situation. _Of course_ , he was the mouse who had felt the iron snap of the trap on his neck that didn’t kill him but pinned him there, just to watch the other creature living in the wall eat the cheese his nose was so barely close to. _He would have shared it._

“Reg, look, just give me some time to sort it—”

“No.” Sirius winced as the word sliced sharp into his belly and let out his courage in a rush of invisible viscera. “All the ‘sorting’ in the world will never make you understand how your bloody fucking selfishness ruins everyone within twenty bloody feet of you.”

The space between them suddenly started to widen in a slow crawl of impossible geometry, and Sirius began walking forward at a fevered pace just to stay in position.“Regulus, just listen to me—”

“I can’t keep doing this to myself, Sirius. I can’t keep reaching out and being disappointed when you shut it all down,” Regulus spat, disappointment reseating itself where ire had been just moments before. Sirius had to start running to to stay within an arm’s length of his brother.

“Reg!”

Regulus stepped backwards, making to leave through the solid black door behind him. “That’s the problem, Siri. Life goes easy on you most of the time, and I end up getting fucked.”

“REG, STOP!”

Sirius tore into a sprint, but he stayed in place as the walls around him rushed outward with a groan like a hulking architectural maw. Regulus had turned completely, his back to Sirius, and swung the door open with finality. Sirius shouted out wildly—the sound leapt from his throat like a firebrand in a defeated scream that was drowned out with a swell as a blaring car horn roared towards the doorway on the helm of a speeding van. _The headlights sliced white-hot into the back of Sirius’ skull, devouring the world until the only concrete shape left in Sirius’ vision was the silhouette of his brother’s body standing still as marble. The noise and fury barreled closer, Sirius’ desperation mounted in the raw ripping of his voice, he fell to the ground, he could the feel the wind of approaching catastrophe whipping at the hair fallen around his face—_

Sirius awoke with a cry, panicking momentarily at the white plane of his ceiling above him. He was flushed with sweat, his tangled sheets sticking to his chest like a second skin and wrapped about his legs in self-made shackles from his kicking. Breath heaving, he forced himself to steadily catalogue his place in his very lived-in flat, in his bedroom, in his bed, alone, surrounded by the relative silence of a Sunday afternoon happening just outside his window. Sirius felt the prickle of tears behind his eyes, so he remained on his back and let them creep down his temples in silent, resigned sorrow for a couple minutes while his heart returned slowly to its resting pace. The length of his hair wended against his neck and sticking to his cheeks felt like dry seaweed he wished he could hide in until the rest of the earth was drowned in rising ocean water. 

Regulus had been dead for exactly three months today, and this was the eighty-ninth day in a row that Sirius had woken from the nightmare of his mind’s distorted version of their final confrontation. It was different almost every time, but without fail Sirius was somehow forced awake by the arrival of the anonymous car that had killed his brother on a drive through the West Midlands. Sometimes it was a sports car, other times a truck, once even a horse-drawn carriage. In the earlier nights directly after Regulus died, Sirius had had to stand and watch his battered body struggle for life and choke on its own air—splintered ribs, crushed limbs, eyes losing their light with agonizing slowness. Almost three weeks running now, Sirius had been torn back to waking right before the fatal hit actually happened. He still couldn’t tell if the lack of finality was better or worse.

Dragging himself into a stand, Sirius vaguely registered that his bedside clock was broadcasting nearly four in the afternoon. He trudged into the shower and washed mechanically, the mute static of empty pain lodged where his lungs met his heart covering everything in a muddy grey. It was alright. He could get used to colorblindness at some point. Probably. The tiles in his shower were a silvery sort of white after all, and the dull chrome of the faucets matched the rest of his appliances. He stood in the running water staring at nothing for a stretch of time he forgot to count.

Sirius dressed simply, the uniform of malaise, the same pair of jeans since sometime in early February and a plain shirt that wasn’t in the overfilled hamper and didn’t smell too strongly of his own body yet. He looked again at the clock; the pub down the road was already open by now, and if he left in five minutes he could drink at least four pints for beyond cheap. _Fuck it_. Why not. He was in need of several drinks and a heavy draught of whatever live music was bound to be happening in the background of everything.

If nothing else, it would be a welcome distraction.


	2. Verse 2 - Introit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Boy drinks beer, boy meets boy, and a whole mess of emotions throws a lot of things into orbit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Playlist for "9" is available at https://open.spotify.com/user/spontaneousness/playlist/7M9d9BUDdlIyYw0X9pHYNi

_setlist 20 March for Phoenix Tail_

_Professor/Fille Danse  
_ _Cannonball  
_ _Blower’s Daughter_

_-_

The glare of the sun sitting low in the sky hurt his eyes as he walked the short distance down the westward sidewalk, but Sirius barely squinted against it. A bit of exercise for his pupils was at least something, he thought, at least better than the constant state of lights-off he tended to leave his flat in lately—relying on the natural light filtering in through his wide windows in the daytime and his mental map of the furniture when it got too dark to see by anything besides the street lamps. He was saving a killing on his electric bill. He hated touching his uncle’s bank account for anything other than meager necessities.

Sirius had left his wand at home and he'd been to exhausted for the last several weeks to do any magic without it, so when he perched a cigarette between his lips he fumbled awkwardly with the near-empty disposable lighter in his jacket pocket. Seven flicks of the starter gave him only just enough flame to start a draw, and he cursed softly to himself before chucking the worthless plastic at the next bin he passed. He missed, sending it careening off the edge of the container in an arc to clatter square against the pavement of the quiet Sunday street. Sirius didn’t stop to toss it away properly.

His life since early January had been a muted madness of restless sleep, weak coffee, reluctant eating, lots of aimless walking, even more aimless drinking, and a propensity to go days without physically speaking to anybody. For a stretch of several days in February, he had nearly forgotten what his voice sounded like and was quite startled to hear its low roughness when he picked up the phone to assure James Potter that _Hi, no, thanks for checking in,_ he hadn’t yet fused to his mattress in depressive squalor. Check back next week.

James was trying, he really was, but very rarely did Sirius have the hear to explain his need to be alone beyond more than _Ah, maybe next time, mate. You, me, and Lily, we’ll catch up. It’s getting easier. Promise._ Which wasn’t ever the whole truth; it tended to feel harder most days, but he wasn’t about to bog down one of the only people left in his life with such dour bullshit. James had come by several evenings with curry and beer, Lily along for the visit sometimes with her maternal tendencies checked carefully, but Sirius always caught the worry swimming in the pale green of her eyes—she was never any good at lying through her teeth with pleasantries. They had only faced the crest of tension about Sirius’ downward spiral once, when James tried to drag him out to some art gallery at the university the morning after the funeral to which Sirius was vehemently not invited.

_Merlin’s beard, Sirius, just come have a drink! I’m not asking you to scale Kilimanjaro!_ They had been arguing the stalemate of leaving the flat for five minutes. James had stood in the doorway like an impatient date, the edge of anger accidentally covering his worried frustration and embarassment at coming to find Sirius slightly drunk wearing a flannel that hung open from his shoulders like a shroud.

_I’m not going, James, I told you. I need to sleep._

_Look, I know this whole thing fucking sucks, and I get it. But I miss my best mate, and this will be good for you. Please. Just come see the show._

Sirius had felt his brow tighten with unwanted grief then, felt the pitch and roll of emotion in his gut as he spat back _Yes, it does ‘fucking suck,’ and I miss my brother, you prat. Fuck the gallery. I’m not going anywhere,_ slamming the door with finality on the wide and immediately apologetic stare that swept across James’ face. Through the heft of the door, leaning back on it, Sirius had heard Lily’s polite knocking laced with insistence rap at the surface behind his head.

_I need to fucking SLEEP!_ he had roared in response, squeezing his eyes shut as fresh and tired tears sprung at their corners.

_Promise me you’ll start talking to somebody about this soon, Sirius,_ Lily’s constant suggestion since the evening he knew of the crash and called their house first, weeping in broken sentences over the phone. Sirius had said nothing in response, straining to hear the murmur of a brief, hushed exchange between the two behind the door before their footsteps receded and he was left alone. Just as he’d demanded and dreaded at the same time. He apologized via owl within the evening, his ghostly barn owl Midas swooping off with the weirdly formal message in the only way he could think to communicate since he’d left his mobile phone on an empty battery for a week. Within the hour Midas had returned with Lily’s neat handwriting in response to assure him that it was _Nothing to worry about, just take your time. We love you very much._ He cried twice that night over the delicacy of their acceptance; his emotions, then and even still, were a tattered minefield of touch-and-go fragility.

Sirius knew their friendship could weather anything, but it still rankled him to look back on the early memories and see what a shit he had been. Nobody deserved the brunt of Sirius Black being a tosser except his family, who had sat on the receiving end of it since he was a teenager. He resolved to call James soon as he flicked his finished cigarette to the curb, rounding the corner to shoulder open the door into The Phoenix Tail.

The only proper wizarding pub within a walking distance that Sirius was willing to weather these days was owned and run by one Albus Dumbledore, ever with a knowing little smile on his face regardless of the circumstances. It would have been unnerving if he weren’t so pleasant. Sirius had gathered from snippets of the old man’s conversations with him and the pub’s other regulars that he used to be quite the force to be reckoned with; a captain in the now-defunct Auror department twenty years ago with the Ministry, he had somehow had an instrumental hand in bringing down the rise of the Death Eaters—a catastrophic and humiliating fall from grace from which the Black family spent the bulk of Sirius’ childhood trying to pick up the last of their crumbled pieces. Sirius sometimes found himself wondering how such a genial person as Albus could harbor such fabled might, and it was those times that his stomach turned as his mind landed on the parallelism of his father.

“Evening,” the old wizard said with a pint already proffered before him, gratefully taken with its first soft gulp down Sirius’ dry throat, “glad to see you up and about!”

“Can’t miss the allure of four-for-four on a Sunday,” Sirius said with a small smile, which he was sure looked as strange and unpracticed as it felt. Albus was too kind to remark on it. “Any music on tonight?” Sirius could feel an itch behind the atlas of his skull to which he couldn’t trace the source, but he knew the distraction of a little white noise would help quell it.

“A guitarist, recently in from Wexford, if my memory serves me right.” Albus’ memory always served him right, Sirius could tell after only their first few conversations that the man was a genius. He didn’t press the point.

“When’s he on?”

“About three quarters of an hour, he’ll be flooing in soon. I heard good things about it from the friend who pointed him in my direction, it should be a fine time.”

“Cheers, I look forward to it.” Sirius raised his glass slightly in a polite dismissal, which Albus took gracefully as he turned to head to the other end of the bar to see to a huge man with a tangled beard and a bellowing laugh.

Left to his own devices, what he had sought at the outset of his decision to drink here, Sirius felt adrift. The prickle of his skin that accompanied every foray outside of his flat nowadays was busy beneath his knuckles. He held two-handed to his glass like flotsam, staring intermittently into the off-season red ale between sips when he wasn’t glancing around the pub.

It was a normal wizarding pub as far as tropes went, with a massive fireplace fit for transporting parties of excitable drinkers at its far side from the street entrance, a set of old racing broomsticks hung as sporty decoration on an outcropping of the ceiling, and a moderate forest of black-and-white photographs against the back wall of the bar fluted with the gentle motion of their subjects. The walls were simple stone on the inside like any Muggle building, probably clamored to be a simple beer hall without too much effort at all. A small stage sat opposite the fireplace, rising knee-high off the wooden floors and fixed with a stool and a soft enchanted spotlight pointing down above it. Folk music was what knit itself best into The Phoenix Tail, and Sirius had become almost annoyingly familiar with the maddeningly minute differences between its narrow sort of artistry. He sighed to himself and continued to drink.

A billow of green flames deposited itself in the hearth soon after Sirius finished the last of his second pint, and Albus raised a hand in greeting to the arrival as he passed a third full glass to a silent and grateful Sirius.

“Evening, Remus!”

The man stepping out of the fireplace with a battered guitar case ruffled a patch of ashes from a fall of short, wavy hair before raising the same hand with a smile. he started towards the bar, broad-shouldered and evenly lank under a heavy scarf and elbow-patch coat, and Sirius felt his gut tighten involuntarily with the foreign and unwanted pitch of interest.

“Hallo! How’s Sunday been so far?” the new interloper, _Remus, was it?_ asked with a brisk Irish pull to his words. The tug in Sirius’s stomach became denser when Remus glanced at him with a smile that was alight with pleasantry before turning back to Albus.

“Thick in the afternoon with the quid ditch broadcast, Hollyhead ended up just barely cinching it. Lots of drinks went ‘round after that one, it’s been a good day.” Albus’ eyes were bright above the half-rims of his glasses as he spoke, pouring a rich amber measure of Firewhiskey into a stout glass and passing it across the bar. Remus tipped it merrily at the old wizard and knocked it back smoothly, while Sirius watched the arc of his throat flex through his periphery. He drowned the thought of staring at it outright with a heavy sip of beer.

“Short set tonight, isn’t it?”Albus continued, washing out a row of glasses with an expeditious wave of his wand.

“I figure three songs is always good enough, else wise they’ll start realizing everything of mine sounds the same,” Remus replied with a joking lilt, and he caught Sirius’ eye again and grinned as he passed the empty glass back to Albus. “See? This poor patron is already sick to death of me.”

“This is Sirius,” Albus said simply, and Sirius took the hand Remus offered in a solid shake. A pang of frustration sat heavily on his tongue as he drew breath to speak, willing his mouth for once to not jumble whatever he was about to say to the attractive stranger in front of him.

“Can’t say yet if _yours_ all sound the same, but I’ll be interested to see how you stand out beyond the others who’ve come through,” Sirius said, and his inner voice immediately began hurling obscenities at itself. _THAT’S what an attempt at humor is now? Fucking tragic._ He nearly shrank back and melted into the barstool, but Remus spared him the thought with a laugh that rang of lavender stalks and clear skies.

“A challenge, and we’ve barely even met. Albus, your regulars are impressive.” Remus kept his eyes steady with Sirius even as he addressed Albus, and Sirius had to be the first to look away with a small acquiescing smile that felt like a foreign language on his face. The embers of nascent allure in his belly were liable to burn him to the ground if he was wasn’t careful. He downed the back end of his beer and in the corner of his vision he watched Remus rake his fingers through his hair again. The man hefted his guitar case with quiet vigor. “I’ll be setting up then, anything particular I’ll need?”

“You can stand or use the stool there, any charms you want to use are up to you,” Albus said simply. Remus nodded again, _How does everything he do manage to be so…light?_ He walked off to the little stage, hopping up onto it and setting to a collection of preparations.

“You’re in for a pleasant several minutes once he starts,” Albus said almost to himself but clearly directed at Sirius, “he’s really very good.”

“I’m sure, I’m eager to hear it,” a response that ordinarily would have been a bland platitude but now held actual truth in its intrigue. He gratefully accepted another pint from Albus, finally but just barely feeling the elusive buzz of the alcohol.

He knew that Albus knew he was queer. He also knew that Albus himself was queer. The first time Sirius had found The Phoenix Tail was last summer, when waking up wasn’t hell made manifest. He had spent an hour flirting in his formerly-signature suavity with a sylvan-looking blonde, with every intention of breaking a month-long dry spell with him just barely past the threshold of his entryway back home, who eventually turned out to be straight as an arrow and blind to Sirius’ interest. Once Sirius was preparing to leave that night after several more solo draughts to squelch his frustration, Albus had refused to let him pay his tab and insisted he would take is as _The tax of commiseration_. Every visit after then made him feel a bit more like he belonged somewhere in this city—a town really, if he was being honest, but the presence of the university made it feel far larger than it was—and made the pub into a welcome escape once January shattered between his fingers. It seemed now, with Albus’ permanent smile twinning a contented glimmer in his pale eyes, the old man thought he knew something Sirius’ didn’t.

“You said he's new to the place, from Wexford?” Sirius asked after a moment of deliberation, opening the swords dance of conversational subtext with slight reluctance. Talking to people about other people against was like flexing rust off of the struts in his brain.

“He’s a new adjunct professor with the wizarding chapter of the university, apparently lectures on dark creatures.”

“A bit young for a professor, even part-time, isn't he? Can’t be much older than 24, 25?” Sirius glanced over his shoulder at the stage as he spoke, watching for a couple seconds as Remus leaned around his guitar and tuned it with almost loving reverence.

“Oh come now, you say that like you’re my age and you’re barely past quarter-life yourself,” Albus parried, making Sirius smile with ta genuineness that took him unawares. “My old colleague Minerva was his mentor for his graduate studies, she insists he might as well be in his forties with the way his mind works.”

“So I suppose he isn’t just some hopped-up folk singer with Big Dreams?” Sirius half-joked, reveling in the warm feeling of easy talk.

“Lots of geniuses play music,” Albus said with a wink, his humor heavy-handed with the presence of a cherry red mandolin hanging above the liquor rack that Sirius had seen him play exceedingly well twice before. Sirius chuckled and felt his chest lighten slightly.

“Test, one-two…” Remus’ slightly amplified voice came from the stage and Sirius turned again to look at him, where he was holding a longish wand of simple polished caramel-colored wood to his throat in an amplification charm. He twisted his wrist slightly, edging up the volume, “Test, test, hallo!” nodding with satisfaction at the level he had found and moving the spell to his guitar. A couple open strums of the strings eventually found their loudness as well, and Remus stepped up to the middle of the stage cradling the guitar slung close across his waist. The low murmur of the pub patrons was already quite soft, but Albus turned down the volume of the Ministry news broadcasting on the set behind the bar. Remus smiled softly with a small nod and began to play.

“ _Well I don't know if I'm wrong  
_ _Cause she's only just gone,  
_ _Here's to another relationship  
_ _Bombed by excellent breed of gamete disease—  
_ _I'm sure when I'm older I'll know what that means;_

 _“Cried when she should and she laughed when she could,  
_ _Here's to the man with his face in the mud  
_ _And an overcast play just taken away  
_ _From the lover's in love at the centre of stage, yeah;  
_ _Loving is fine if you have plenty of time  
_ _For walking on stilts at the edge of your mind,  
_ _Loving is good if your dick's made of wood  
_ _And the dick left inside only half understood her;_

 _“What makes her come and what makes her stay?  
_ _What make the animal run, run away?  
_ _What makes him stall, what makes him stand,  
_ _And what shakes the elephant now,  
_ _And what makes a man?_

_I don't know, I don't know, I don't know  
_ _No I don't know you any more…”_

Sirius’ unwitting grip on his glass slipped on a bead of condensation, and he hurtled back into himself with a blink from being whisked afloat in the tune. Remus wasn’t just ‘very good,’ he was bloody fucking _really_ good. He strummed the guitar like it was part of his body, familiar and close as his fingers clustered on the frets like a dance of runes, with tight harmonies that flowed like honey, and the bell-clear pitch of his voice was just barely flawed enough to make the story undoubtedly nested in the lyrics resonate with truth instead of contrivance. It was almost unsettling; it was blessedly necessary.

Remus carried through the rest of the song, another glimmer of his personality shining through within a closing verse tossed off in French—Sirius hadn’t heard anybody speak the language since he’d left the Black household for good, and the pleasantness of Remus’ accent latticed between the syllables caused a strange curdling of the discomfort inside of Sirius. He didn’t dislike it.

The audience applauded with a pleased swell after the final heart chord was strummed, and Remus smiled and bowed his head shortly with demureness that Sirius had only seen on the stage from the older, more weathered sort of musicians. He retuned a couple strings as Albus replenished Sirius’ beer again; Sirius realized with resigned pleasantness that he was finally several steps from sober.

“He’s better than good,” Sirius stated when he met Albus’ eye.

“I’ve always believed there was something in the water in Ireland that made every Irishman a cracking good songwriter.”

Sirius chuckled through the christening sip from his glass as Remus started in on the next song, a more reserved pattern to his accompaniment with an even, laid-back groove to it. As his foot tapped against the leg of his stool in steady time through the first verse and into an extremely well-wrought chorus, Sirius’ fingers are struck with an itch he hadn't had in months. He leaned in across the bar to murmur to Albus below the noise floor of the music, “Do you have a pen I could borrow?”

Sirius Black would be the last man to consider himself any sort of serious artist, but the stacks of filled-up sketch books accrued over the years and now relegated to the back of his closet would beg otherwise. When he was a boy trying to hide from the as-yet-unnamed fear of his parents, he would shut himself in his room at Grimmauld Place and imagine the sprawl of London below his window as a new landscape of a different sort of magic. He would spend countless hours by all the daylight he could steal drafting up maps, building, people, creatures—anything and everything. It became an idle fancy of his that carried him through the low points of all his years through school and beyond, always a pen-and-ink proficiency that made him accidentally captivating to women and allowed him to draw walls around himself until he was sure enough in his own internal compass to step out and start talking to men. He enjoyed the sensation of creating things on blank paper—now that he had one of the simple blue Muggle ballpoints in his hand, a distant anger at himself for letting this hallowed outlet fall to disrepair after Regulus’ death took root in his thumbs. 

He pushed and pulled the pen experimentally across the crepe-like surface of the napkin he had spread surreptitiously under his hand, feeling the slight tug of the paper under a pressure that was a bit too hard. He lightened the tension in his left hand, dragged the gentle curve of a line around the napkin’s edges, and bit back a dopey smile at the ease of it.

_“Stones taught me to fly,  
_ _Love taught me to cry,  
_ _So come on courage!  
_ _Teach me to be shy…”_

Remus guided his second song into the beginning of the final refrain as Sirius turned the napkin over and started shaping out the amorphous beginnings of a portrait. Remus had an easy way of standing on stage, a slight lean with the weight on his left leg to better throw his right arm into strumming with the right sort of feeling, and he tipped his head at a slight angle when he held longer notes. They were all very small movements, but movements nonetheless that Sirius was suddenly eager to capture on paper. The second song finished, more applause from the pub rose up. Sirius sketched carefully at the way his collar fell lopsided around his neck.

“Thank you all so much,” Remus said, retuning the guitar again with swift precision, “I’ve got one more and then I’ll let you return to your regularly-scheduled Sunday night.” A quiet chuckle chained its way through the audience, somebody tucked into the back alcove hailed “Cheers!”, and Remus started in to his third song with a gentle smile.

_“And so it is  
_ _Just like you said it would be;  
_ _Life goes easy on me  
_ _Most of the time…”_

Sirius suddenly felt his heart plummet into his stomach. His grip seized on the pen, halfway done with rendering the character of Remus’ face and now unable to finish for the rush of raw, open-wound emotion that had just been dumped into his bloodstream. Regulus’ last words to him, torn up from the grave, set to calm and lovely music, in the mouth of an Irish stranger that Sirius was stupidly drawing on a fucking pub napkin, _what the everliving fuck?_

He looked up at the stage as if it would give him answers, his pulse quickening and breath starting to come short, _shit shit shit_ this was not the time for a panic attack; his vision tunneled in on Remus in some sort of cosmic joke as the singer brought the music into the chorus of _I can’t take my eyes off of you…_

Sirius tried to focus on breathing steadily, his fist curling unconsciously around his napkin canvas, felt his heart hammering in his chest like a charging greyhound—the music was pleasant, beautiful even, but he couldn’t focus on it beyond a screen of sound with the mounting keen of fight-or-flight washing out his senses. He stood blindly, making a short gesture to Albus that he hoped translated into the fact he would be right back, and stepped through the side door into the outdoor alley used for smoking as silently as possible.

“Fuck,” he hissed to himself, breathing in heavy and uneven gulps of the night air. He tied his hair back clumsily and pressed his fingers to his temples, eyes shut tight while he tried to drag his fleeing sense of self back to the present. He focused on the sounds of the street and tried to ignore the low-frequency press of the music from inside at the seams of the door, meditating on the sporadic wheeze of passing cars underscored with a constant drone of early spring crickets. 

After a few minutes intently focusing on the effort of existing without disaster, Sirius realized he still had the napkin crushed in his left fist. He opened his eyes slowly, unfolded the thin paper, and stared down at the partially finished portrait of Remus in slightly-smudged blue ink. It wasn’t bad, but he’d basically ruined it in his confused haste to get up and leave. Sirius heaved a withering sigh, suddenly exhausted and craving the solitude of familiar loneliness. He stuffed the napkin into his breast pocket and made head back into the pub to close his tab, but the door suddenly opened towards him and he jumped back with an accidental yelp.

“Oh! Sorry, mate!”

Remus looked at him from halfway through the door with slightly-worried alarm mixed thick with the dregs of adrenal happiness. Sirius hoped he didn’t look too much like a deer in the headlights as he shook his head dumbly.

“No worries, wasn’t hurt.”

“Well that’s good.” Remus stepped fully out into the alley, setting his guitar case down at his feet and leaning easily against the brick wall behind him to rummage in a coat pocket. “Did something scare you with that last song? Caught your eye there for a moment, you looked like I’d stabbed you in the gut.”

“No, no, I—it’s nothing,” Sirius insisted with an airy little laugh, hoping it was disarming enough to foist the attention away from him. Remus pulled out a metal cigarette case and took one between his lips, lighting it with a pinch between his forefinger and thumb before feeding a second one with the same flame and offering it to Sirius, who accepted it gratefully. It was hand-rolled tobacco in neatly-twisted rolling paper, and Sirius wondered idly if the absence of a filter would quell his nerves more quickly than normal. It drew sweet with a particular violence of spice, and when he exhaled he felt an easing of his veins start to creep in.

“Did you like the set?” Remus asked, watching Sirius with something that might have been curiosity in better lighting.

“I loved it,” Sirius said plainly, awkwardly skirting around the fact he could barely stay for a full minute of the final song. “Your lyrics are unique, I—I really enjoyed listening.”

“Well thank you, Sirius,” Remus’ said with a wholly genuine pleased grin, and Sirius felt his heart stammer at the way his own name sounded in the musical cadence of his voice. 

In a flailing effort to change the imperceptible headiness of the air, Sirius drew deeply for another calming twist of breath and asked, “Albus told me you’re from Wexford, what brought you here?”

“Work,” Remus said, pushing a fall of soft curls out of his eye and tapping ashes against the wall, “I finished graduate school and accepted a position lecturing on the history of dark creatures in urban settings.” He quirked a smile at the way Sirius eyebrows raised slightly of their own volition. “I know, right? Also just needed a change; know the feeling?”

Sirius badly wanted to shout _More than you might ever bloody know_ , but he settled for nodding. “A port town we most certainly are not, you’ve got a change alright. How does the music fit into it?”

Remus ground the end of his cigarette underneath his heel, the sole of his nondescript shoe crunching into the earth like the whisper of a passing commuter—unobtrusive, slightly wound-up, forgettable. Sirius blinked and tried to shake the pin-sharp instinct that told him to catalogue everything this man did like some kind of voyeuristic museum.

“This isn’t what pays my bills, that’s probably pretty obvious,” Remus was saying when Sirius wrenched his attention back into the present. “I’d have to be mad to try and build any sort of life on a hand-me-down guitar and a voice I’ll probably abuse into oblivion halfway through my 30s with this business on top of the beer.” He gestured broadly at the gap between himself and Sirius, the courteous breadth of smokers sharing space. “But it’s what makes me happy. I’m not trying to rely on my escapism to make rent every month.”

“That’s smart of you,” Sirius said, willing his eyes to pull themselves away from the twist of Remus’ wrist and back up to his eyes; _Moderate mistake, fuck, why are you like this, Sirius—_ “Which isn’t to say you aren’t good, just—I mean, I’ve seen one too many people come through here with dreams a hell of a lot bigger than their talent. You’re realistic. But you’re also ridiculously talented.”

Whether Remus’ small smile was the result of him selectively choosing to ignore the compliment or not, Sirius couldn’t tell as the man leaned his shoulder against the wall and fixed him with an easy, inquisitive look. “So you’ve been coming here long enough to get a feel for ‘that type’ then?” He said the phrase slightly surrounded with the unsaid laughter of sarcasm, and Sirius had to muster a short bark of a laugh to himself.

“What can I say, I’ve become a dreaded Regular.” Sirius meditated on another draw on his cigarette, fixing his eyes into the middle-distance over Remus’ shoulder in bland thought. “It’s a good pub. Albus is a good man, he taps good beer, makes me feel like I’m not just pissing away a Sunday night. The music is usually nice too, if not a good distraction from the day-today. Which is welcome.”

“I won’t ask why it’s welcome, but I’m glad it’s a good place for you,” Remus hummed, and Sirius felt his cheeks flush warm involuntarily as he brought his attention back to the other man’s face. The green in his eyes shone even in the murk of the night around them, a deep green like Spanish moss—Sirius had to murder the coil of warmth in his belly with a punctuating drag on his cigarette and scuff of his toe against the sallow grit of the ground below him.

“It is a good place, and I’m glad to have heard you here.” Sirius gambled on the lasting evenness of his voice and found blessedly that it didn’t hitch or quiver or do any of the rough-isms it normally tended to do after he spent far too many hours wading through his own sorrow. Remus granted him another smile, his hands shrugged softly into his pockets as he kicked off the wall and stood—they matched heights at eye level, Sirius noticed now under the appraising gaze that somehow managed to be devoid of any sort of judgement.

“Well, Albus put me on again next Sunday for another short set. It seems the denizens like me,” Remus said, leaning down briefly to heft his guitar case and brush some grit from the brick off of one of its curves. “Will I catch you here with another pint?”

“Absolutely,” Sirius replied, and he found himself drawing another quick little breath as he watched Remus’ arm twitch with the motion to head back inside for the Floo. “Can I buy you one next time?”

“I drink for free when I play instead of taking a cut,” Remus said through an amused little spasm of laughter. “But yes. You can buy me a pint. Or a shot. Or both.”

“Both,” Sirius said immediately, blowing a thin stream of smoke into the brisk ink of the sky as he held Remus’ eyes with his own. A strange staring contest of clear, unexplained interest passed between them for several seconds, and Sirius was once again the first to break when he tipped his face down to grind his cigarette out on the heel of his boot and tap a new one out of the carton in his pocket. “I’ll let you…get back to the hearth then.”

“And I’ll see you next Sunday.” Remus’ small farewell smile was quick, and he shouldered his way back into the yellow glow of the pub with a short little wave back at Sirius. The door fell shut again, leaving the alley in damp silence, and Sirius closed his eyes and knocked the back of his head lightly against the bricks several times.

“Fucking. Merlin. Rising. You. Stupid. Jumpy. Bastard,” he muttered to himself with each light bump, opening his eyes again to stare up at the spray of visible stars winking through a sparse covering of clouds. He sighed. Maybe this was a good thing. Maybe it would help to force himself to stand on the vertiginous edge of his comfort zone for several days at a time, do things he had the tendency to balk at instead of tucking tail and avoiding them like a plague rat. Maybe he _would_ buy a talented, charming, frankly gorgeous stranger a battery of drinks next weekend. Maybe he would leave the flat more than once in the days between now and then. Maybe he would actually call James. Maybe, maybe, maybe. He would never know unless he bloody fucking _leapt_ for once.

He snapped his fingers and lit his cigarette with a spark of blue flame.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again for reading, comments and kudos are much appreciated! I don't have a concrete idea of when the next chapter will be finished, but certainly within the next two or three weeks <3


	3. Verse 3 - Bridge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Absent dreams, present friends, and a harrowingly real set. It all feels a bit closer to home nowadays.

_setlist 26 March_

_Amie  
_ _Rootless Tree  
_ ~~_Coconut Skins_ ~~ _Elephant_

_don’t fucking cry about it this time, Lupin, you’ve had long enough to get over it_

_—_

Sirius awoke with a fluttering blink, a sharp inhale through his nose, a moment of senselessness before registering the pale slant of the light outside and gentle twittering birdsong through his closed window.

No panic. No cold sweat. No nightmare.

Blank, perfect, silent nothingness had engulfed him in sleep last night after spending a two-hour blur watching the television scream color across the dark flat. He hadn’t paid any attention to whatever was broadcasting, cycling addictive bits of Remus’ songs through his head again and again like a Time Turner from his sprawl on the sofa. Sirius didn’t stay at The Phoenix Tail much longer beyond Remus’ departure, choosing instead to finish off the pint he had left in his haste to get fresh air before closing his tab. Albus didn’t say anything beyond a smile with a hint of triumph in it, and Sirius had signed the check with a flourish and swept out back up the several blocks of sidewalk to his quiet flat.

Lying on his back now, the vague tick of his clock the only timekeeper in the stillness of morning, Sirius felt like a fallen leaf perched teetering on the scale of a dragon—he was grateful for the landing, but he had no idea if the world was about to rear up and incinerate him or not. He looked to the side and let out a withered breath of a laugh, nearly disbelieving, to see it was ten o’clock in the morning. He hadn’t been up before noon in weeks.

Sirius shifted to his side and felt an unfamiliar ache move down the trunk of his body, like a glint of sun on metal. He pushed at the sheets and looked down before feeling his face burn crimson and throwing his head back against the pillow with an exasperated scoff. He glared at the ceiling again. So there was the tradeoff then; no nightmares, but _Ta, morning,_ wake up with a hard-on.

Arousal had become almost a myth in the months behind him, an understandably so. Waking up screaming for nearly one hundred mornings did wonders to kill any sense of blood pulse flowing south when it was too busy roaring in one’s ears. The elective refusal to spend meaningful time with anyone besides himself also significantly hamstrung Sirius’ chances of coming across anybody who could make him feel anything more than indistinct static acknowledgment of existence on their behalf.

_Until last night, you bloody idiot._

Sirius rolled his head sideways into his pillow, grumbling to himself in general annoyance. Here he was, pointing like a game hound back to his old tendency of idealizing an enticing man he’d had a single conversation and a cigarette with. He recognized the cloying around the pit of his liver as distant embarrassment; if nothing else, the extreme lack of intimacy in three months had made him put it into perspective and realize he had been less of a Gift To Mankind and far more of a Picture Of Badly-Veiled Need.

“And now you’re fucking loony over a pretty professor with an accent,” Sirius snarled to himself, deadly intent on ignoring the pressure between his legs while he burrowed his face into his pillow. He laid still for several quiet moments until he flopped back onto his back with a frustrated huff. Not going anywhere fast. Good. _Wonderful._

Sirius was still looking pointedly up at the corner where his ceiling joined his wall, ice-blue furrow of dark brows and long lashes pent up in pointed avoidance, when he rested his left hand on his hip. His skin was morning-warm against the brightness of the air in the room, blooming against his palm like sunlight. He closed his eyes, muttered a soft “Fuck all,” to himself, and slid his hand to close the distance to the hallowed heat of his waking.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Sirius was keenly aware of the fact he hadn’t gotten off in three months. It didn’t particularly bother him, since the barren blandness of depressive episodes tended not to rely on the luxury of enjoying his body. But now the idea made his pulse thrum, and an instinctual and primordial corner of his mind stirred to life and zeroed in on the goal of finishing swiftly despite his initial reluctance. The stillness of his room around him was almost Victorian, an eggshell chamber of delicate half-light dyeing his sheets with shadows that stuttered with the subtle movement of his hips and legs as his muscles flexed and relaxed. He remained almost wholly silent and came within a handful of minutes with his eyes shut tight in a slightly underwhelming crest of colorless vision. _Ah well, out of practice._

He charmed his stomach clean with neat alacrity and a tight wave of exhaustion and sat up slowly through a stretch that unknotted in a chain down his spine. With _this_ he groaned feather-light and almost laughed at the irony—much of the mundane these days really was better than his leftover memories of sex.

Sirius tossed his bed covers halfway into listless order before moving to the bathroom for a shower. As the water hissed down and warmed on its own, not quite worth it to waste more energy on charming it warm—his wand was still lying forgotten somewhere in the flat—Sirius stared at himself in the mirror above the sink. He was distantly grateful that although it might hollow out his eyes and affect his complexion, no amount of anguish could change the inherent perfection of his facial structure. He was bone-pale to begin with anyways, and the certain archness lent to him by the way his nose slanted sharp into the pour of his cheeks and jawbone made him look a hell of a lot more composed by default than he felt. Sirius heaved a sigh and balled a loose fist into the back of the crow-feather swaths of his hair. Maybe he would cut it all off. But he wouldn’t.

The shower was near scalding, which made Sirius feel awake and clean. He washed slowly and found himself staring again at the dull metal of the faucet. If he shifted just so, it caught the filtered bottle-green light through the leaves of the tree that grew outside of the bathroom window and apparently threw daylight over the shower curtain at this hour. He tipped his head back to let the water sluice across his face and hum past his ears like a slipstream.

Sirius wrapped his hair up in a lopsided twist with one towel while he briskly dried off with another and dressed mechanically. His eyes found the dull black square of his mobile phone on the floor next to his closet, and he stared at it for a moment before plugging it into the lost-looking cord in the wall by his mattress. He sat at the foot of his bed thinking of nothing but vague green shapes leftover in his mind’s eye until a little _ping_ sounded from the phone. Followed by another. And another. And a barrage of notifications that continued for several seconds.

Sirius scooted across his bed, taking up the small machine without ceremony and blindly deleting every notification that had popped up. He knew they were all from James or Lily or Marlene or maybe even Peter, reaching out sometime last month before they all obviously gave up—Peter had been the only one to try by owl, and even that had gone largely ignored. The thought didn’t hurt him as much as he anticipated it might. It was alright anyways, he didn’t have the energy quite yet to deal with the sympathy of others.

**awake, free for lunch. can i meet you and lily somewhere?**

Sirius tapped out the short message to James and sent it after a moment’s deliberation. Knowing him, the ponce probably had a notify spell rigged up to his wristwatch or the lens of his glasses or whatever else he thought was in fashion. He wasn’t wrong, because the reply came almost immediately in James’ signature short bursts:

_Morgana’s tits you charged your phone  
_ _Muggle pub near the medical wing is best  
_ _Lily has a lecture at 1:00  
_ _See you at noon then?_

Sirius let the reticule in the text field blink several times and unwrapped the towel around his damp hair before knocking out **cheers noon is good** and putting the phone down to let it charge the rest of the way. He stood up and stretched again, yawning shallowly and closing one eye against the climbing daylight. He moved to look out the window, peered up and down the street that ran below his third-story walkup, cataloged the motion of the cluttered combination of Muggles and wizards only divided to his eye by the way they looked around the storefronts as they moved through the neighborhood. It was comfortably urban around its edges, which Sirius had found ideal when he moved in last summer. It was still ideal, just less familiar now with so much time spent hiding from it all within himself.

His mobile chimed again and he leaned over to glance at the screen, feeling a smile threaten at the corner of his mouth to see Lily’s simple message of _:)!!!!_ alight. He didn’t bother responding, he’d be seeing her in an hour anyways.

If there was anything that sequestering himself in sadness had taught Sirius besides the discomfort of dry tear tracks, it was how to easily waste a day an hour at a time. He had become exceedingly patient with the quietude of his own head after the initial shock of grief wore off, and so he was all too content to sit himself in the living room in a long lounge across the safe and look at nothing in particular. He left the television off and let his mind wander, looping recent memories through the back of his brain like a film reel. Many of them were slices of Remus singing.

It didn’t feel, he found with a spark of something that almost felt like the smell of hope, so much like watching his life fall apart anymore.

—

Muggle pubs were loud. The inability to cast a charm that could even out the intensity of ambient sound left the place in a roar of conversations, especially with a weekday lunch rush so near the university. There was a certain measure of overstimulation it caused, such a loud and reckless lack of magic that it nearly disoriented Sirius. He was busy trying to bite down annoyance at the loudness around him, both hands around a cold pint at a broad wood-topped table, when James strode in with a bright smile.

“Not half as pale as I thought you’d be!” he exclaimed, hefting Sirius into a clap of an embrace that felt like antidote on Sirius’ shoulder blades. “So a good morning finally, yeah?”

“Seemed as much,” Sirius said with a small smile as he eased himself back down into the booth seat. “Up before noon is a new one for me.”

James hailed a pint from the bar and sat down across from Sirius as the thick plasticine leather of the seat squeaked with its displacement. He had a wide grin on that made Sirius slightly self-conscious.

“You’re looking at me like I’ve just told you I’m having a bloody _baby_ or something,” he muttered, sipping a draught of beer as James laughed with a brightness that wove an unavoidable chuckle into Sirius’ own belly.

“That would be a look of abject horror,” James corrected him, “nah. Just happy to see my best mate looking a bit more like himself.” He reached across the table and bumped Sirius’ forearm resting there with a gentle fist. Sirius smiled down at his sleeve and bristled suddenly when he felt a hand ruffle at the back of his hair.

“There he is! Mercy, your hair is getting long,” Lily cried as she rounded the corner and slide into the booth beside James. Sirius reached back to smooth his hair and tried to calm his hammering pulse while Lily pressed a kiss to James’ forehead.

“I’m thinking of cutting it off,” Sirius said automatically, grateful his voice wasn’t shaking. Lily snorted and waved a dismissive hand at him.

“But you won’t. I feel like it’s been ages since I saw you last, you had a good morning then?”

James was up to fetch another pint for Lily and order food, so Sirius eased into the motherly calm that Lily unknowingly brought with her everywhere. He shrugged. “Relatively, I suppose. No dreams at all, neither good nor bad. Just a long and welcome sleep.”

“Well there’s progress. Did you do anything differently before sleeping then? A change to the routine to help?” Lily had tilted her head just so and Sirius felt himself relax ever so slightly. She always did this; he was glad she didn’t think James was in sufferable and decided to actually marry him one of these days.

“I had a few drinks at The Phoenix Tail and had some nice chat with Albus. The music there was good too, some guitarist who sang as well. Apparently he’s a professor at the university.”

“A singing professor? Living in a Muggle comedy now, are we?” James teased as he slid back into his seat with a pint and a platter of chips.

“James, that isn’t lunch,” Lily said as if it was the thousandth time she had done so. James shrugged and piled a handful onto a smaller individual plate as Lily scooted over him to get her own food with a good-natured roll of her eyes on an aside to Sirius. James squirted a measure of mustard next to the chips and gestured at the mountain of them between the two men.

“Go on then, if I eat them all myself Lily will make fun of me.”

“Not the hungriest, but thanks.” Sirius took one and found himself enjoying the near-burn it gave the roof of his mouth with the satisfaction of a salty crunch.

“So, singing professors?”

“The live music at The Phoenix Tail last night, yeah. New bloke in, from Wexford. Albus told me he just started teaching at the university this term. Lectures on dark creatures.”

James waggled his eyebrows and Sirius chucked a half-bitten end of a chip at him with a smile despite himself. “Oh fuck off, he sounded good.”

“You’re blushing,” James sang, wiping a jot of salt off of his lapel from the projectile, “he must have looked good, too.”

“Perhaps he did,” Sirius hummed, fixing James with a mocking glare that turned into a smirk.

“What, that’s it? No launching description?”

“We shared a cigarette and talked for maybe five minutes, James, there isn’t much to describe.”

“Sharing a cigarette, isn’t that the queer equivalent of getting engaged? Lily, Sirius is getting married.”

Lily let out a small sound of surprise as she sat back down with a cold sandwich. “Married!”

“Your man is a twat, I’m not getting married,” Sirius deadpanned around a mouthful of chips. “I talked to the musician at the pub last night for a couple minutes and had a nice time.”

“They shared a cigarette,” James said with purpose, swirling a pattern of mustard across his plate.”

“Well that isn’t nothing,” Lily admitted before biting into her food. Sirius threw his hands out in front of him.

“Seriously? You two are like a pair of fucking puppies, picking up a scent that goes nowhere! Yes, he was attractive. No, I don’t know more than the first thing about him.”

“And you shared a cigarette?” James prodded again. Sirius huffed.

“ _Yes.”_

“And you think he’s easy to look at?”

“Yes, I just said—”

“When are you going back to see him.”

“Sunday night.”

James let out a bright “Aha!” as soon as Sirius let the automatic response trip out of him, and James looked smug while he busied himself with reloading his plate of chips. Sirius felt the color rising in his cheeks even as Lily fixed him with a soft, pleased look.

“I’m glad you’re at least _talking_ to people, it’s a step in the right direction,” she said, careful to avoid insinuating more than familiarity.

“It—” Sirius stammered, desperate to make some sort of argument on the contrary; _No, this wasn’t significant, it was just a chance meeting, nothing will come out of this, it’s stupid to think any differently._ But he couldn’t find any explanation beyond the truth roiling warm and intent at the pit of his stomach. It _was_ a step in the right direction. A fucking terrifying one, but a good one nonetheless. “Yeah. Yeah it is.”

“So Sunday, eh?” James asked, and Sirius felt himself lighten with the look of fraternal pride flickering behind James’ glasses.

“Not a date, he’s just playing again at the same pub.”

“That’s more of a date than James suggesting Thai food and a film five nights out of seven,” Lily said, looking pleased when James protested with a sound around his sip of beer.

“It’s _not_ a date,” Sirius repeated, laughing with a spasm that felt like springtime when James pelted his own chip at Sirius’ shoulder. _This was a good idea_ , he thought to himself, finally admitting he needed people around him a bit more than he liked to think.

—

It wasn’t a date, but it was starting to fucking feel like preparing for one.

Sirius fretted at his suddenly-apparent unruliness in the mirror, deciding on the same all-black getup that never seemed to offend but still feeling disheveled. He was still thrumming with residual contentment from seeing Lily and James the previous Monday, a heavy dose of familial warmth he had missed for far too long. But now that he was thinking about seeing what Remus had to offer in a new set, panic was starting to eat away at his peace. Would he find some way to accidentally read Sirius’ innermost terror again, twining dead phrases into music and shaking Sirius from his foundations?

Sirius shook his head shortly and closed his eyes, running a hand through his hair. One of his fingers caught on a knot at its ends, and he began to automatically tie the falls of inky hair back in a loose bread that rested over his shoulder. He tied off the little tail that curled slightly and sighed with resignation at his reflection. _You’ll do._ At least pulling his hair back woke up the edges of his face a little bit, not so weighed down under the curtains of thick hair. He hadn’t tied it up to leave the flat in a long time and had forgotten how much it complemented him as a whole.

_Quit mooning over yourself and get going_ , Sirius thought to himself in a sudden shaking-off of his preoccupation, glancing around with a canvasing look for his wand around the corners of the bedroom. He heaved a light, fussy sigh and held out a hand; “Accio fucking wand.”

A clattering under his bed frame sounded for a moment before the whizz of dark ebony met his palm with a solid _whup_. His magic tingled faintly beneath his skin to be in contact with its conduit again after several weeks, and Sirius turned the simple wand over in his hand as he ran a thumb over the runs on its handle polished with use. It had been Alford’s own first wand before his—an eccentric handing-off to 11-year-old Sirius that made him feel very important at the time before now only underscored the painful rift his closeness with his uncle had eventually torn between him and the rest of his family. It was, of course, for the best, but it had meant the brutal parting with Regulus that he could have avoided if not for the fucking inheritance that made it all fester.

A twinge of anger rose like bile in Sirius’ chest and he had a flash of a fleeting thought to snap the wand clean in half, rip out the fox hair core and burn it all standing. But he settled for tossing it onto his bed and absently wiping his hand on the front of his shirt. It still felt strangely incongruous to think about casting anything significant. It wasn’t like he _needed_ to, it just made everything much more convenient and natural. But convenient and natural still felt like luxuries, so he would wait.

The air outside was heavy with the charge of gathering clouds to the west when Sirius stepped out of the flat, and he felt the first smatterings of a sprinkling rain on his face in the last several feet before stepping into The Phoenix Tail. It began to come down in earnest buckets as the door swung shut.

“Fine timing!” Albus said warmly as Sirius pulled off his jacket and tucked himself down onto one of the bar stools. There were noticeably more people in the pub than there were last week, and Sirius offered Albus his best go at an optimistic smile.

“Good for a Sunday, isn’t it?”

“I might have told some of the university ilk that a professor in their midst puts on a good set,” Albus said, his eyes smiling back over the top of his spectacles as he dried a glass and poured a pint for Sirius.

“Would he want his students knowing this is how he moonlights?” Sirius joked, but found at his depth that he was only half-joking. He swallowed down the awkward possessiveness like anti-venom.

Albus was about to reply when the hearth suddenly blazed a loud, rich green and ushered Remus into the pub. Sirius tamped down a surge of warmth and tried not to stare with the beginnings of a stupid bloody smile plastered across his face, but his quiet eagerness was checked for him when Remus stalked over to the bar with distracted purpose _._

“Evening,” Albus said, sliding the same measure of whiskey as last Sunday across the wood.

“Cheers,” Remus said tersely as he knocked it back. Sirius said nothing while the empty shot glass hit the bar again with a dull thunk and Remus seemed to stare at it blindly for a moment. Sirius turned the pint glass between his hands with stale preoccupation, which looked to draw Remus’ attention like a snap.

“Hallo then, have you been well?” he asked Sirius directly with airy ambiguity.

“Yeah, plenty glad to be here again,” Sirius replied, not able to bit back the corners of a grin that he felt slide on to his cheeks. It remained slightly unmatched by Remus’ own in response—it didn’t quite reach the green of his eyes. It was still lovely.

“I’ll, um…I’ll go get set then,” Remus said quickly, breaking himself off like a felled power line and beelining for the stage. Albus said nothing as Sirius looking down into his glass after watching the retreat for a moment, but Sirius could feel the old man’s unsaid inquiry burning like a pinprick on his shoulder.

“Is he okay?” Sirius asked quietly, not quite caring about the edge of worry that had snuck its way into his imploring.

“Rattled, but fine. Minerva said he has moods sometimes,” Albus said with fatherly understanding, a soft sigh lighting the end of his words. Sirius’ stomach twisted and he downed the rest of his beer in silence.

Remus prepped his amplifying charms tonight wordlessly, the same distracted look plaguing him even as he slung his guitar across his shoulders. The lights of the pub lowered as he stepped to the center of the stage like the previous Sunday, and Sirius quietly hoped the music would give him some sort of window through the scrim of discomfort.

The first song was warm melancholy, parallel to the strange cloudiness that made it clearer but explained nothing. Sirius’ fingers buzzed with the craving to sketch again, but he was too drawn in with trying to decipher Remus’ apparent displacement to do it.

_Something unusual, something strange  
_ _Comes from nothing at all,  
_ _But I'm not a miracle  
_ _And you're not a saint;  
_ _Just another soldier  
_ _On the road to nowhere…_

A twinge of self-loathing was rising up in the curves of Remus’ voice, an esoteric frequency that Sirius knew he wouldn’t have been able to sense if he hadn’t been running himself through the ringer of misery for the past several months. It hurt, strangely, in an off-center and implacable way, to feel it coming from somebody else.

The first song closed and Remus nodded a simple, short thanks to the audience. He retuned his guitar with automatic precision through the applause. “Thank you,” he said quickly, “thanks for being here today. Uh, apologies, I suppose, for the strength of the language in this next one.” One of his higher strings twanged in resistance as he twisted its peg down gingerly. “I’m sure there’s at least a few of you out there who will identify with it.”

A driving picking pattern launched Remus’ second song, and Sirius listened intently to try to catch more of the purpose behind his unease. Sirius had forgotten to ask for another pint and didn’t quite want one. His attention was more than captured.

_What I want from you is empty your head;  
_ _Well they say be true, don't stain your bed.  
_ _Well we do what we need to be free,  
_ _And it leans on me just like a rootless tree._

_What I want from us is empty our minds;  
_ _Well we fake a fuss and fracture the times.  
_ _We go blind when we've needed to see,  
_ _And this leans on me just like a rootless—_

_So fuck you, fuck you, fuck you  
_ _And all we've been through,  
_ _I said leave it, leave it, leave it,  
_ _It's nothing to you  
_ _And if you hate me, hate me, hate me,  
_ _Then hate me so good that you can let me out, let me out, let me out  
_ _Of this hell when you're around…_

Sirius felt himself unconsciously clenching the left hand he had resting in his sideways lean on the bar into a fist. There were brick-red jets of pain in this music, undeniable now, and Sirius forced himself to relax the muscles he had tensed in his arms, legs, jaw. _This is not your place to be concerned, you don’t know this man beyond pleasantries, stop fucking projecting—_

But Sirius knew this type of pain. Intimately, more than he would readily admit. It tasted of bitter loss and regret, and it was the type of hurt that nobody had the right to ask about. So Remus was doing the next best thing to sitting on a therapist’s couch, weaving it all into songs like baskets to be sent down the river. Something like envy pricked at the back of Sirius’ throat as this ability to relieve the burden of keeping it all choked down on the inside.

The second song petered out with a minor twist of finality and Sirius felt himself applauding along with everyone else, palms stinging slightly. Remus bowed with another shallow dip, bending at the waist, and sighed almost imperceptibly through his amplification charm.

“One more for the night,” he said after the clapping had ebbed away. “Bit of a heavier set, but I really appreciate everyone listening. Have a lovely night, cheers.”

The pub went silent and Remus closed his eyes, visibly collecting himself. Sirius could swear he saw the muscles in the sharp-edged jaw clench, a quiver to the curve of his throat that look like he was holding back a wave of emotion. Sirius sat still as glass at the edge of his stool to watch how the final song would unfold in the rhyme of Remus’ evident sadness.

_This has got to die;_ _  
_ _I said, this has got to stop,_ _  
_ _This has got to lie down_ _  
_ _With someone else on top._ _  
_

_You can keep me pinned_ _  
_ _'Cause it's easier to tease,_ _  
_ _But you can't paint an elephant_ _  
_ _Quite as good as she,_ _  
_

_And she may cry like a baby,_ _  
_ _And she may drive me crazy;_ _  
_ _'Cause I am lately_ _  
_ _Lonely._ _  
_

_So why'd you have to lie?_ _  
_ _I take it I'm your crutch;_ _  
_ _The pillow in your pillow case_ _  
_ _Is easier to touch…_

Sirius couldn’t have ripped his eyes away from the stage if somebody had a wand pointed straight at his chest. It felt as if gravity had just carved his stomach out from under him and left him careening emptily, vertiginous and rapt at the way Remus was spilling his emotions on the stage like buckets of vibrant paint. He had never seen vulnerability so plainly before. It was fucking enchanting. _  
_

_…When you think you've sinned,_ _  
_ _Do you fall upon your knees?_ _  
_ _Or just sit within your picture;_ _  
_ _You still forget the breeze._ _  
_

_And she may rise_ _  
_ _If I sing you down;_ _  
_ _And she may wisely_ _  
_ _Cling to the ground!_ _  
_

_'Cause I am lately_ _  
_ _Horny,_ _  
_ _So why would she take me horny?_

His cheeks burned; Sirius felt the heat of it and knew he was blushing, but he also knew the relative dark of the pub would cover it until he coached himself back down from the rise. Remus’ voice slid easily into a raw shout as he transitioned into a stronger strum that swerved into the wrapping up of the bridge— _  
_

_What's the point of this song?_ _  
_ _Or even singing?_ _  
_ _You've already gone,_ _  
_ _Why am I clinging?_ _  
_

_Well I could throw it out,_ _  
_ _And I could live without,_ _  
_ _And I could do it all for you,_ _  
_ _I could be strong!_ _  
_

_Tell me, do you want me to lie?_ _  
_ _Because this has got to die;  
_ _  
_ _'Cause this has got to stop—_

Remus’ voice caught, and Sirius’ chest seized as he saw the clear glimmer of brimming tears in Remus’ eyes for a split second when he turned his face down from the light.  
_  
_ _This has got to lie down, down…_ _  
_ _With someone else on top;_ _  
_

_You can both keep me pinned,_ _  
_ _'Cause it's easier to tease—_ _  
_ _But you can't make me happy_ _  
_ _Quite as good as me..._ _  
_ _(Well you know that's a lie)  
_

Remus kept his left hand squeezing the neck of his guitar but dropped his strumming hand in finality, and the pub broke into its last swell of respectful applause for the night. “Thank you,” Remus managed to say with another short bow, still careful to keep his face averted from the direct shine of the light, and turned to deposit his guitar in its case with quick dexterity. The applause was still working its way down but Sirius could hardly clap, only watch with another hopeless tug to his guts as Remus subtly swiped at his eyes with a sleeve and ducked off the stage toward the alley exit.  
  
The lights came back up and the dull murmur of resumed conversation rose around the pub, and Sirius moved to follow Remus before catching Albus’ eye.

“Is he alright?” Sirius asked automatically, not meaning to lay such immediacy under his words.

“Go ask him,” Albus replied simply, and Sirius abandoned the bar to walk briskly for the alleyway door that had just fallen shut.

The static hiss of rain smatter met Sirius when he shouldered his way outside, closing the door quickly behind him as if something would escape if he wasn’t fast enough. He ducked under the awning to the left of the door and, as his eyes adjusted, saw Remus leaning heavily against the wall at the other corner of respite from the rain.

“Ah,” Remus said simply, and through the relative dark Sirius saw Remus wiping more obviously at tears in his eyes. The man sniffled once and let out a weak sardonic laugh. “Hi. Sorry.”

“Sorry what?” Sirius asked, slightly tight of breath, careful to keep an arm’s length of distance between them lest he reach out and try to bundle Remus into his jacket. _Fucking hell, Sirius, listen to yourself—_

“Emotional mess, just, uh...this set. Not quite what you expected from last week, was it?” Remus said, tucking his hands into his pockets and looking over at Sirius with a wobbly half-smile. Sirius’ heart leapt and he clamped it down with an iron will.

“Bullshit,” he said without having to think, “you still sounded bloody great.”

Remus’ answering laugh was more genuine as he blinked the last of his tears away and ran a hand through his hair with alleviation. “Good to know I didn’t drag _everyone_ down with the ship.” He let out a short, heavy breath, tugged absently at his earlobe and sniffed once more. “Thanks.”

Sirius felt, for the first time in a long time, the compulsion to ask deeper questions—what was wrong, what had made those lyrics dig so deeply, from where did Remus dredge up the bloody resolve to stand there and let down so many walls for strangers, what did that _feel_ like? But he tucked it away like a book behind his ribcage and extended a cigarette to Remus. “I know it’s filtered, but I figured I’d even us out,” he said when Remus looked up at him.

“Oh sod off, this is lovely,” Remus said through a small smile that looked as if it caught him by surprise. He took the cigarette from Sirius gently and charmed it alight before it even touched his lips. The angles of his face lit up in the glow at the end of the burn, and Sirius resisted the urge to shatter decorum and reach forward to thumb at the bowed angle of his mouth.

“You have honest emotions,” Sirius said just loud enough for his voice to carry over the rain. He didn’t know where his train of thought was even fucking taking him anymore; he couldn’t find it in him right now to care.

“I have a lot of _shit_ emotions, but I’m glad you think they’re noble,” Remus said around en exhale, smoke rising past his mouth like a spell. “Putting it all into music makes them easier to digest. I had a pretty terrible day, needed the release.”

Sirius said nothing but nodded his agreement. _Merlin_ , if only he had such a vehicle for his own calamity. The back of his mind shouted that he could take up a sodding sketchbook again someday, but he ignored it with another hefty drag. The men were silent under the awning until Remus spoke up again.

“I was engaged a year ago. To be married, I mean.”

Sirius dutifully and viciously ignored the sudden riotous jump in his heart that screamed _LEAVE, YOU PONCE, HE ISN’T INTERESTED_ and let Remus continue.

“Her name was Alice, we went to school together. Different Houses, but I was mad about her. Spent all out time together. I planned every bit of my life around her and thought she wanted the same, but she cheated on me with a friend of mine. For a long time before I found out and broke it off.” He paused to finish the stub of his cigarette, flick it to the ground and scuff it out with a half-hearted grind of his shoe. “They got married early last summer. So my solution was to write a whole mess of songs about how much I hated it all.”

“Fuck,” Sirius breathed, mostly for the misfortune of Remus’ situation but also an ounce for the discovery that Remus was attracted to women.

“Exactly. So it still hurts to drag it all to the surface, with those three songs in particular. But every time I play them I hope that maybe it won’t be so fucking painful this time.” Remus stared at his feet for a second before looking up at Sirius with the same indecipherable little half-smile from before. “Didn’t want to immolate myself afterwards as much as usual this time though, so there’s progress.”

“Yes, not being on fire is a good thing,” Sirius said, feeling conflicted when Remus chuckled to himself. The sound was melody all over again, striking Sirius like a jet of quicksilver from a powerful wand. _Fuck it_ , Sirius deserved at least some sort of happiness. After months and months of dark and horrible shit, he deserved to be around somebody who made him feel like this. Even just potential friendship with Remus was better than nothing. Fuck all if he really was straight, at least Sirius could try and have him in his life to _some_ degree. They were silent for several more strangely-comfortable moments in the mitigating cover of the rain stretching through the nighttime.

“Speaking of evening us out,” Remus said, standing up off the wall and rolling his shoulders, “now we’ve gone two-for-two on finding each other all bunched up in this alleyway.” There was a good-natured tease to his words, an invitation of similarity, and Sirius finished his own cigarette with a long exhale and extinguished it on the wall. He suddenly felt very small.

“My end of things is a bit more…morbid than a lost relationship. I’d—would prefer if it was left alone. For now. Sorry.” His voice trailed off as awkward discomfort creeped into his edges, but Remus seemed unfazed.

“Sorry what?” Remus said, wit smooth as he handed Sirius’ own acceptance back to him with equal understanding. “Nothing wrong with that. Just wanted to ask, courtesy and all that.”

“I appreciate it,” Sirius murmured. The two men looked at one another for a moment, Remus calm and Sirius twined up but prepared to reign in the frustration of budding feelings. Regardless, he like the way Remus watched him with peaceful clarity instead of what usually felt like judgement from others.

“Well, thank you for listening. Both…in there, and out here,” Remus eventually said. “I have a lecture in the morning I still need to finished preparing for, I should get on.”

“Any time,” Sirius said, reaching inwardly to drag out a few more moments— _shit, Black, he doesn’t even fall on your end of the fence._ He ignored his insides and cleared his throat with a grainy catch. “Honestly, any—any time. It would be nice to be able to talk more, I think, beyond a post-performance chance. Yeah?” He tried vainly to convince himself _friendship, friendship, bloody fucking friendship._

“Mindreader,” Remus said with quiet brightness as he drew his phone from his pocket and woke the screen with a tap. “Do you have a mobile, or just owl?” he asked, the blue light illuminating his face from below and accenting the arc of his cheekbones.

“Mobile works—Merlin, do you actually know wizards our age who only use an owl?” Sirius let the rare and sudden burble of sunny joking inside him invade his speech and tinge it with a laugh. Remus replied in kind with a grin.

“You’d be surprised by the ridiculous tradition of some academic types; I don’t claim to be above any of it though, careful there,” he sallied back with false warning. Sirius coached him through the pattern of his mobile number and typed Remus’ into his addresses with an easy smile still on his face, and he let out a light sigh when he pocketed his phone again. Remus held out a hand to Sirius, who took it with warm camaraderie in a solid shake.

“Well, we’ll set something up then, Sirius. Thanks again for coming, and listening. And talking. Really, it—it helps just as much as the music itself.”

“Cheers, yeah, it was grand. I’ll send you a message soon,” Sirius replied, and his palm tingled with faint, longing resonance when Remus broken the handshake. “Get home safe.”

“Oh, I’ll try,” Remus said over his shoulder with sudden vigor as he turned to leave, “Ended up fifty miles in the wrong direction in some old woman’s sitting room last week because I didn’t enunciate enough. Probably scared a year off her life.” He stopped in the v-shaped knife of light from the opened door and smiled. “Goodnight, Sirius.”

“‘Night, Remus.” Sirius waved through a chuckle he couldn’t quite help and stared out over the high alley fence into the dark sheets of rain once the door fell shut.

He knew this feeling, however long it had been since it last rang in him so clearly. It wasn’t the smoldering insistence of blind lust, or the irrational invincibility of love—which he had really only felt once before, fordisaster of a man he’d barely though about in months. This was the tidy and grasping desire to knit someone else’s life into his, and it was really only ever this stark when he had first met James. Sirius couldn’t deny that of course he still felt very present threads of durable and tangible attraction to Remus as a man, but if he wasn’t even queer then what was the point of mooning over it? Remus was kind, he was wiling to open up, and he was somebody new to talk to. All three things had been sorely absent from Sirius’ life until now. He wasn’t about to let that go to waste because of a selfish whim of his own sexuality.

Sirius let himself stand under the awning for several more minutes before he left the alley through the outside exit. His tab was already closed, he’d catch up with Albus some other evening. He turned up his collar and started the trudge home, but somehow the weather didn’t feel half as unpleasant as it had on the way over.

—

**testing one two**

_Check, one-two one-two_

**did you shock any other old women on your way home?**

_HA, only the lady who lives on the bottom floor of my walkup. She was letting her terrier in from the yard and I don’t think she expected anyone to be using the Floo._

**the grannies of britain remain safe for one more evening**

_I’m a public menace, clearly  
_ _Thanks again for being alright with me unloading like that tonight  
_ _Happens sometimes, never quite learned how to control the water works  
_ _Kids in school used to tease me for crying at the drop of a hat  
_ _Joke’s on them though, I learned how to play the guitar and started pulling left and right at parties_

**your peers were twats, clearly  
** **“play james blunt ooo”**

_Oh please don’t remind me_

**hahaha  
** **so what’s good to do that isn’t a pub?**

_Do you like art?_

**love it**

_Been to the university gallery lately?_

**been meaning to for a couple months, new collection?**

_Yeah, of weird bullshit  
_ _Dissertation piece by one of the Muggle students goes up on Wednesday night  
_ _Free wine_

**i’ll be there with bells on**

_Hahahaha I’ll send you the information when I pass the poster tomorrow at work_

**cheers i’ll look forward to it**

 

**i’m off then, goodnight Remus**

_Great! Sorry, I took a quick shower  
_ _Thanks again, goodnight :)_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again for reading! My daily schedule IRL isn't very conducive to a rigid update schedule for this fic, but I hope you're all still interested in checking in to read every now and then <3


	4. Verse 4 - Duet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Art is strange, conversation is a careful dance—and Sirius hasn't danced in a long time.

_“Bloody hell, you haven’t fused with your floorboards yet. What’s the occasion?”_

Marlene McKinnon looked summarily and usually bored from the other end of the phone as Sirius held it, sprawled almost upside down on the armchair in his sitting room, for the video call he had been inspired to make this morning. It was 10 o’clock, Marlene was wearing an ironic wide-brimmed black hat with a massive pair of sunglasses on her way across the university campus, and Sirius had already cleaned the kitchen spotless.

“I think I have a date this evening.”

_“Excuse me, WHAT?”_

“A date with a man I’m almost positive is at least 70% straight.”

_“Back up, Siri, not all of us are fucking clairvoyant. Who is this mostly-straight paragon that’s managed to get you to do something at night besides sulk?”_ Marlene had stopped under an awning and removed her sunglasses as if it would make her hear more clearly. Sirius furrowed his eyebrows.

“I didn’t tell you about the Irish professor from the pub?”

_“No you well didn’t! Explain!”_

“There’s a bloke who started singing at Albus’ pub a week-and-a-half ago, he lectures at the university. We’ve talked a bit, we’re going to some Muggle student’s gallery showing at the other end of the university tonight.”

Marlene rolled her eyes and replaced her sunglasses, resuming her walk down the sunny sidewalk. It was unseasonably warm that day, offset by Marlene’s all-black ensemble with a severe dark lipstick to match it all. _“What’s his name? What’s he like? What kind of art is it? Does he know you used to draw? Why are you so sure he’s straight? Answers, Black!”_

“Remus Lupin, he’s lovely in a calm-ish kind of way, has a voice like a fucking superhuman, he said the art is ‘weird shit’—some dissertation or another—he does _not_ know I drew and isn’t going to find out, and he used to be engaged to a woman. So.” Sirius ticked off the answers on his fingertips and let the phrase hang as he righted himself in the chair and dragged a hand through his hair with a yawn.

_“Do James or Lily know of him? Seen him around the campus or whatnot? And woman schwoman, Caradoc fucked me regularly for almost a year before he kipped off to America for that Ministry man from New York.”_ Marlene waved the hand that wasn’t holding her phone as if Remus’ unknown sexuality was winnowing in the air by her shoulder.

“They know he exists, but I don’t think they’ve seen him. Healers don’t usually cross curriculum with Defense courses, from what I’ve gathered.” Sirius patently ignored her mention of Dearborn, with whom Sirius had first discovered the phenomenon of not being attracted to girls in a storage closet during their sixth year.

“ _Oo, a heroic defender, how butch of you,_ ” Marlene sang sarcastically.

“He told me his subject is dark creatures, he’s a recent PhD. Part-time lecturer.”

_“So, what, you’ve finally realized you’re worth more than hating yourself unnecessarily? Took you long enough._ ”

Marlene's victorious little smile coming through on Sirius’ screen made him smile as well. Marlene understood his tendencies these days better than anyone else. She had lost her own brother when they were still in school together, the eldest McKinnon a random victim of a sudden and terrifying rash of Muggle-born murders in the early 2000s. Sirius had only known her for a year when it happened, but he had dug deep to be there for her as best he could with what she needed. Hers was a bright and fiery spirit that Sirius was drawn to like a moth, his only point of solace outside his family before he met James in third year. When Regulus died, she somehow divined through the way Sirius had supported her grief years before the best way to prop him up—a careful cocktail of tough love, occasional commiseration, and a large dose of carrying on as normal. She never once demanded he try to feign anything beyond managing to exist, which was sometimes a mistake James and Lily made when they did their best to coax Sirius out into the daylight. Especially early on. Marlene spoke Sirius’ language of coping fluently, and he valued her endlessly for it. James was his brothers, but Marlene was his double.

She also gave the best unsolicited advice that Sirius never quite knew he wanted until she would club him across the face with it.

“At the very least I’m going to see if I can coax my shit brain into construing it as _friendship_ instead of trying to undo his belt,” Sirius said, wincing when Marlene barked a sharp laugh that peaked and crackled the phone speaker.

“ _Right, and I’m the ghost of Minister Minchum._ ”

“Truly, Marlene! He’s—nice, and I haven’t had very many nice people around so far besides you and James and Lily. And maybe Pete. And even then you’re sometimes questionable.”

Sirius laughed as Marlene jammed a middle finger into the camera of the video screen, a smooth laugh that sounded like some of the most natural happiness Sirius had felt in weeks.

_“Well I expect an update. And a free dinner when you inevitably end up snogging him. I’ve got an exam now, send me a message later._ ”

“Have fun with Divination, you hag,” Sirius deadpanned, smirking when Marlene blew the screen a kiss and eded the call. He rolled a cramp out of his neck from having lain out across the uneven couch arms and stood up, bending to touch his toes with a slow roll. He never remembered feeling so bunched up before, but the sensation had intensified over the last several days. Perhaps he really _was_ coming out of the worst of it.

He stood back up and looked at the freshly- and manually-scrubbed kitchen, the fairly empty bastion of self-care that he had abandoned since wintertime. There had been at least three containers in the refrigerator half-full of moldering things that may well have been alive before he scraped them into the sink disposal and let them go with its gurgling grind, but otherwise it was sparse to begin with. _Springs eternal, or what have it_ , he thought to himself before sliding on his shoes. Sirius took up his keys and stared at them for a moment— _Fucking hell_ , he was going to buy groceries. He couldn’t hold back the little flit of pride that flickered at the base of his throat as he descended the stairs to the sidewalk.

—

The evening was balmy, a warm front barreling in and nearly choking Sirius like a steam engine as he made his way toward the Muggle side of the university campus. The university was the core of the town, where wizards ended up directly after Hogwarts if they wanted to keep studying and didn’t want to strike out for Oxford or Cambridge, or move to other parts of Europe or the world. The grounds were old, like most of their corner of Britain, but the town that sprung up around it was fairly new within the last fifty years. It was small, but there was enough to do. Sirius felt like he was starting to rediscover it all over again.

The wizarding end of campus was glamoured with a deep and wide-reaching blandness charm, which coated the entire of the east end of the quad with with a vaguely boring air to passing Muggles. Wizarding students were never bothered, no explanations ever had to be made at the crossroads of campus. It was an exceedingly expensive glamour to maintain, but it was the easiest one to deal with. Uncle Alford had been in the glamouring business as Sirius grew up, so he knew plenty about how to cover their world from any potential prying eyes.

The downside to what the magical university offered was its lack of Humanities, which were an enticing and wholly Muggle-wrought collection of studies. Sirius had briefly entertained the idea of becoming a portrait artist in the secrecy of his own dreams when he was still at Hogwarts, but the discover that he could only choose a discipline for advanced study from among what he had already been tasting at school was a letdown. Were it not for the money— _not for the turmoil, not for the death_ —Sirius probably would have grudgingly taken up and undergraduate path in Transfiguration. If he had really cared enough, he probably could have twisted it in his favor to work in restoration at one of the many tiny wizarding museums across the country. But he had the money, he had the lot of life thrown at him, and so he existed day by day and had early on decided that he would stick to something work-like if it ever piqued his interest enough. Nothing had since he stopped drawing indefinitely.

The Muggle arts building was toweringly modern and seemed to be made entirely from windows as Sirius rounded the corner to climb a long, shallow staircase up to its entryway. Gold light was streaming from the four-story high foyer into the lawn outside, and from here Sirius could see a crush of well-dressed people within milling around a gallery setup. Sirius had opted himself for muted finery; a plain white dress shirt, black jeans, subdued canvas shoes, and well-cut sport coat he’d had to shed halfway through the walk for the heat. He had twisted his hair up loosely at the nape of his neck, and while he still felt a prickle of sweat there he was grateful for the accidental foresight to sweep it up from his shoulders.

Remus had agreed to meet him outside, and as Sirius approached he felt a twinge of anxiety at the size of the crowd that became all the more apparent now that he was right outside. He put his hands in his pockets, checked his watch compulsively, wondered if lighting up a cigarette this close to the entrance was considered rude or par for the course. Sirius was just about to dig the carton out from the breast pocket of his jacket when the approaching, shadowed form of someone coming up the concrete staircase turned into Remus in the light streaming from the building.

It was the most professorial Sirius had seen Remus looking in the now three times they had met, his pub arrivals made up of simple shirts and jeans. The sticky spring air apparently didn’t bother him at all, with a dark green lightweight sweater overtop of a button-up. He had rolled his sleeves up attractively to the elbows as what looked like an afterthought to the warmth, which Sirius noticed with a bright tug in his chest that he ignored as best he could. He smiled his greeting and stepped down one step to meet Remus on even footing.

“Have you been waiting long? I was just across campus finishing up,” Remus said with a smile, pinkness evident across the crests of his cheeks like a light sunburn from the walk. Sirius swallowed and violently cut off the flash of a thought to lunge forward and taste the skin of Remus’ jawline.

“Just arrived not two minutes ago, no worries,” Sirius replied, hoping the tightness in his voice wasn’t outwardly evident. “What sort of _culture_ are we in for tonight?”

“Prepare to be educated, my good sir,” Remus said with a feigned posh accent. He led the way into the building before turning over his shoulder to direct another smile at Sirius. “I’ve been seeing them set up the installation from the lower sidewalk, if nothing else it will be interesting to at least _look_ at.”

He pulled open the door to the foyer to the dull roar of mingling people, echoed acutely by the flat, shiny surfaces from which the monstrous entryway seemed to be entirely constructed. Sirius felt a wave of preemptive panic start to boil somewhere near his knees, but he felt the presence of Remus stepping into the crowd behind him and the shudder ceased almost as instantly as it began. _That’s new_.

A maddening array of thin wires had been strung up in a complex pattern across the reaches of the high windows. They crossed in a thick weave above the crowd, a chandelier of postmodern clawing made up shapes that twisted through the range of severe to lovely depending on from where one was looking up at the tangling mass. Somebody bumped Sirius’ shoulder in passing by accident, and he became aware he was staring dumbly upwards and probably blocking the entrance. Remus was looking over at him from the right of the foyer, waving beside a table filled with hors d’oeuvres and ranks of plastic wine cups.

“It’s certainly something, isn’t it?” Remus mused as he helped himself to a cup of white wine, tipping his chin up to the wire sculpture. “If I wasn’t positive this was the Muggle wing, I would have thought it was charmed together.”

Sirius sputtered around a sip of dry red, blessedly avoided a stain down his front. He screwed up his brows wordlessly at Remus, an incredulous sort of _Why the fuck would you say that out loud?!_ before Remus laughed in a burst of realization and edged his university identification badge out of his pocket to tap it once in indication.

“Our glamour extends along with my ID anywhere on campus, I’m essentially a blank spot in everyone’s periphery right now. I could shout out the state of the Ministry election process and nobody would even blink.”

“Something tells me that’s not exactly what they expect you to do with it,” Sirius muttered, acquiescing to Remus’ smile with his own small one as he wiped a lingering drop of dark wine from the corner of his mouth. “That’s one hell of a ruse job for them to uphold.”

“Ah, our corner of the university is older than sin. Part of the strength comes from its longevity.” Remus popped a cube of cheese into his mouth and turned on his heel with the intent to peruse. Sirius followed, slipping through a crowd of shoulders and snatching scraps of conversation full of words like “brutalist symbolism” and “contrivance.” He should have felt horrible awkward, but the solidity of Remus weaving through the chaff head of him made Sirius feel at ease to float along and take in the exhibit. 

The foyer was set up with high, baffled walls of stark white hung with painfully modern pieces. It was certainly “weird shit,” with heavy scrapings of oil paint piled on each wide swatch of canvas and twisted into organic shapes. The palette seemed to consist of nothing but the limited gamut of red. The series of the twelve paintings offset with the precarious mass of the wire above the hall made the title on the banner Sirius noticed high up on the wall to his left make sense; _INFARCTION_.

“Morbid,” Sirius muttered to Remus, pressed close to the man’s left side and slightly behind. Sirius tried keenly to ignore the scent of gentle cologne that Remus was apparently wearing that was evident from so near, a forest-y blend of clean linen and muted spice. It went straight to the pit of Sirius’ pelvis, and he promptly wished he could sink straight into the well-waxed marble floor.

“But not quite hitting as deep as they probably wanted it to go,” Remus replied just as softly, even though his glamour rites allowed him to speak freely. “Look at the brush strokes—” He pointed to the canvas in front of them, a wash of scribbled near-fuchsia fading down into a muddy, crusted crimson. “It looks like it’s trying to convey panic but it’s all too reserved to feel genuine.”

Sirius weighed Remus’ opinion as he spoke and snorted defiantly when he pointed out the reigned-in boundary of the paint. “Well, hello Professor Art Critic.”

“Sod off, my mum’s a painter, I have a birthright to spout pretentious bullshit,” Remus said through a good-natured smirk around a deep sip of wine.

“Is she?” Sirius hummed, true interest sparking on the back of his tongue.

“She shows sometimes at little open houses back in Wexford, she isn’t ‘high art’ or anything but she _did_ go to painting school in the ‘70s. She’s a Muggle.” He added the aside as if it were her hair color after finished the dregs of his cup, and the vindictive side of Sirius panged at the ease with which Remus was able to accept his familial makeup.

“Well, feel free to spout whatever you want about the art, because I don’t know the first thing about painting technique,” Sirius quipped in return. He said nothing of his dormant skill with charcoal or pen and ink.

“Don’t tempt me, I’ll make most of it up. Another?” Remus gestured with his empty cup and Sirius nodded, tossing back the rest of his own wine. The tannins of the strong drink sat slightly metallic behind his teeth, pleasantly rounded-off acidity reminiscent of weeknights in fifth year stealing draughts of similarly cheap wine from the seventh years in the common room. The memory felt of warmth instead of its normal aching, distant numbness.

The exhibit really was well-intentioned, but as Sirius swept the crowded room with another wide place he agreed it was all sort of just…there. And the abstracted shaped on the canvas were starting to all look the same. The only really impressive bit, Sirius had decided by the time Remus returned with two more glasses of wine, was the wire sculpture slicing through the air.

“That’s my favorite piece,” Sirius said to Remus as he accepted his fresh cup of red without looking, his head tipped back to point at the massive knots of metal suspended almost impossibly like a chandelier.

“I read the title card for it by the table, it’s supposed to represent a heart. Something about how ‘the patrons of the exhibit become lungs and breathe into the piece, without an audience it dies as silently as it arrived,’ etcetera etcetera, which is bollocks because they took a week to set it up—I watch the progress each time I passed outside—and it could _not_ have been very silent. There are giant screws holding it into the walls, look there, must have destroyed the walls,” Remus replied, pointing up to the corners of the ceiling. Sirius laughed, and the sound of it reflected pleasantly into the din around them.

“Bullshit notwithstanding, at least it looks interesting,” he said in a low voice.

“Agreed. Thoughts on the wine?” Remus asked brightly. The light glaring around the foyer spangled Remus’ eyes with more green than Sirius had noticed in the alley at The Phoenix Tail and there was a spray of freckles over the bridge of his slim nose that was now illuminated, and Sirius’ voice decided to take an extra half-second before it started working.

“Lovely gallery wine, only the finest ratio of alcohol content to price in all the land,” he exclaimed, and apparently a tad too loudly as a pinky-looking woman glared at him from over his right shoulder. Sirius swallowed his rising glee and looking sheepishly at Remus, who had just finished laughing. “I think I’m disturbing the sanctity of the pilgrimage,” he whispered as softly as he could over the din. Remus chuckled again.

“All’s well then, I figured it was a good way to flex the rust off the start of the evening. There’s a wizarding pub not three blocks away where you won’t get eyes from angry artists, care to join?” Remus’ eyes danced with the ease of speaking, and Sirius felt the lightness rise in him as well like champagne bubbles. He swallowed down the large gulp of wine left in his cup and followed closely as Remus turned back toward the door. He cut through the crowd of nondescript people like a beacon, as if the glamour were reversed and Remus was the only body that mattered in an ocean of mundanity.

Sirius was having one hell of a fucking time trying to construe this as friendship.

—

“So besides showing up at The Phoenix Tail on the weekends, what strikes your pleasure in town?”

Sirius was slightly drunk, seated across from Remus in a tiny booth at Morgana’s Redoubt, and trying desperately to not dwell on the way his voice curled around the word “pleasure.” Between them was a tall and strong duo of drinks—whiskey for Remus, a stiff gin for Sirius.

“I honestly haven’t been out much lately, winter was a bit of a drag,” Sirius said with a heavy air of sidestepping that he hoped Remus couldn’t hear. “Spring’s promising to at least be bloody warm though, might be forced outside by all the sunshine.”

“Agreed with both. Do you work?”

“Ah…between jobs right now.” Sirius felt his stomach twist as he refused to bring up the money; _Nah, not quite in the mood for a job when I’ve got post traumatic stress and near eight million galleons sitting in a bank catacomb collecting dust_ didn’t seem like the right thing to mention at the moment.

“I leapt about for a year before going for the good ol’ doctorate, I think it’s good to be jobless for at least a little bit,” Remus said with a shrug, blessedly putting the subject to bed as he traced a finger around the rim of his glass. “Besides taking smoke breaks in the alley at Albus’ pub then, what do you like to do?”

A nearly imperceptible ringing in Sirius’ ears was telling him this was starting to encroach bodily into his perceptions of date-like territory. _He likes women, he almost married a woman, you’re not a bloody woman_ —the mantra hummed in the base of his neck as Sirius willed his mind to reach down and claw up the memories of being a full human being who actually did things. It took a fair amount of his concentration to keep the past tense out of all his words.

“I collect records, so I end up listening to a hell of a lot of music to make the hobby feel worth it. I have a good appetite for reading, especially all the old dramatic science fiction. I can also, once in a blue moon, be persuaded to waltz.” Sirius faked a triumphant smile that became mostly genuine when Remus’ eyebrows shot up.

“Waltz? Really?” He sipped from his whiskey, let his eyes flick across key points of Sirius’ frame above the table as Sirius felt his cheeks pink up pleasantly. “I can’t say I’m surprised. You look the part.”

“Excuse me,” Sirius insisted with mock defense, but he was laughing with a vibration of giddiness skipping along in his voice.

“What with the hair and the pretty face, you’re a regular trope,” Remus teased.

“Watch it there, the term is ‘austerely severe.’” Wit felt tart and fresh on Sirius’ tongue, and the approval moving like smoke behind Remus’ eyes made him feel suffused with a small shot of power. It was all new, and it made him worry less about steering his tone away from idle flirting under Remus’ apparent guidance. _Friends can flirt sometimes, can’t they? Doesn’t mean they’re destined for bed. This is normal._ But in the back of his mind, Sirius was telling himself that this normalcy tasted oddly like blatant attraction.

“What’s it like to lecture at the university?” Sirius asked, hoping to nudge the conversation back into more neutral territory no matter how good it felt to stride so close to fire at the moment. Remus drew a deep sigh and shifted in his seat to a slight lounge; his collar had fallen open slightly and exposed the hollow at the base of his neck. Sirius didn’t dismiss the vague curiosity of what the curve of bone might have felt like under his fingertips.

“I wrote my dissertation on a study of dark creatures living in urban environments—vampires, huldra, spriggans, werewolves, the like—and compared the sanctions and political climate of how they’re dealt with today versus how it was at the inception of the Ministry in their earliest records. It’s a lot of comparing the language of laws, loopholes, supplied benefits over time, records of violence. It’s fascinating, and sometimes disheartening, but it’s a necessary subject. Without at least some of us writing about it, it all just gets swept under the rug.” He paused to sip deeply from his drink. “And I realize that didn’t actually answer your question; the university is good. I’m a bookish sod, the research-plus-teaching atmosphere is exactly what I’ve always needed. Even just adjunct, I feel like I _fit_ , you know?”

Sirius didn’t know, and he didn’t feel particularly like lying in the moment. He settled for a warm neutral smile.

They revealed steadily more about themselves, an epee between their foils of mutual interest—regardless of how deeply that interest went on either end. Sirius learned that Remus could tap-dance, and had a penchant for baking cakes in long episodes of downtime. Sirius let fly the recently-untapped truth of his affinity for running and a staggering preference for coffee over tea.

“Now that’s just treasonous,” Remus joked, stacking his newly empty glass into the other in front of him. Sirius was halfway through his own second gin and was in a soft enough haze of drink that he could have been persuaded to down it in one go if Remus so much as lifted an eyebrow in challenge. The other man’s eyes were alight with the merry wash of moderate intoxication, and Sirius considered himself extremely blessed and more than a little eager to be on one end of their current conversation.

“Do you want to head out for a smoke?” Remus asked, pulling his wallet from his back pocket. He drew a handful of coins out and Sirius immediately dug into the pocket within his sport coat before Remus extended a halting hand. “Aye, quit; I dragged you out to come look at weird art and then interrogated you here for the better part of an hour. My bill,” he said sternly, severely undercut by his inability to keep a smile from crawling onto his mouth.

“He says as if this whole operation wasn’t entirely and enthusiastically voluntary,” Sirius quipped back, whacking two galleons solidly onto the tabletop. “Throw in a couple knuts and it will be even.”

“Fine, but you’ll smoke one of _my_ cigarettes as recompense,” Remus sniffed, which shouldn’t have sounded as petulantly sexy as it did to Sirius, but he had stopped counting the number of times his train of thought had skipped a rung because of Remus’ turn of phrase.

A measure of the stickiness in outside’s heat had worn off, so Sirius was glad to leave his sport coat on; the small pockets on its waist gave him somewhere to tuck his hands and felt at least a little bit less awkward. The two men walked in silence to cut through a small park to the west, and Remus walked ahead to sit contentedly on a stone bench under a tree that looked like it was sighing through its own branches. A whip of wind passed by to rustle the leaves, and Remus had to snap his fingers three times to light his cigarette through the short bluster. He extended the little metal case to Sirius, inviting him to sit as he brushed a fan of hair off of his brow.

“I promise it’s not half as uncomfortable as it looks, concrete monstrosity,” Remus coaxed when Sirius took the couple of steps toward him to sit and accept the cigarette. Remus stretched the arm on the opposite side of Sirius across the back of the bench and tipped his head back slightly, closing his eyes briefly with an inhale. Sirius blatantly, selfishly didn’t avert his eyes from the arch of Remus’ neck this time.

“Regardless of the seat, I’m glad I came along tonight,” Sirius said with crisp efficiency. He was still looking at Remus when the other man looked sideways at him, noticed his unlit cigarette, and leaned forward to light it from the end of his own. It took the last remains of Sirius’ resolve to keep from plucking the rolls of paper from their fingers and chancing a kiss right then and there— _well so much for friendship, you ponce, now your mind’s made up and there’s no coming back from that._ The regret he expected to feel in the moment felt oddly similar to expectation.

Remus smiled wryly to himself when he settled back onto his half of the bench. “I’m really very boring, I like all the dour bullshit Victorian literature and I have a penchant for craft tea. I honestly can’t understand how you find me the least bit interesting.”

“Oh please, you’re plenty interesting. You made me get out of my flat and look at _art_ , I haven’t gone to a gallery of any kind since before I quit drawing.”

“I didn’t know you used to draw,” Remus mused, honestly piqued and smiling simply such that Sirius didn’t realize what he was saying until it was already out in the open.

“I dunno for the life of me why I thought it was a good idea to stop.” Sirius could feel the words bubbling out of him like molten purpose and ordinarily would have scrambled to claw them back in, but he found himself pleasantly resigned to spilling the levee. Remus was watching him with those wide, honest eyes and so Sirius let himself continue under the safe roof of his lack of sobriety. “Used to be I’d fill a sketchbook in a matter of weeks, I drew like a goddamn madman. I _loved_ it.”

Sirius heard the unsaid _Then why did you stop?_ in the air of Remus’ answering slow exhale of smoke, so he shrugged as if it had actually been words and continued to barrel through his foggy self-control, headlamps off; “My brother died in January. I lost a lot of motivation.”

It took a moment for his thought process to connect with his mouth again, and Sirius felt the tang of bald regret on his palate once he realized what he’d let out. He hissed a fierce “Shit,” directed mostly at himself with a bit for the road at the humid night sky that suddenly felt like it was pressing in on him. “Look, I—”

“My da died when I was twenty-two,” Remus replied immediately, soft-voiced but with strength the arrested Sirius’ inevitably poor excuse for exposing his guts before he could even breathe it. “I didn’t pick up my guitar for two more years afterwards until Alice finally left me, and I was angry. At a lot of things. Mostly myself.”

Sirius kept his eyes trained on the ground, his cheeks suddenly hot with blind feeling and adrenaline. He didn’t know what his stomach or his godforsaken tongue was liable to do if he forced himself to meet Remus’ eyes. Remus was clearly unbothered as he continued.

“After enough shouting matches with the powers-that-be to all the empty air, one tends to realize it’s not their fault at all but just a big wad of cosmic fuckery.” He paused, carefully grinding out the butt of his finished end and tucking a leg up beneath him in his sit to turn and face Sirius on the bench. Sirius blinked andfound that he enjoyed the fricative permanence of the work _fuck_ at odds with Remus’ gentle voice. “I just wanted something to yell at. So I was essentially yelling at myself for nothing, for the better part of a year. Anger is strange. I didn’t realize what good soil it made for art until I had nothing left to do but start playing music again.”

Sirius finally let himself look up and was struck by the ease with which he met Remus’ eyes once he did. He saw nothing but understanding in them.

“I think…I’m still in the middle of my shouting-into-the-universe bit of it all. Except it’s a very small universe, mostly just my flat,” he stammered. Remus chuckled with a soft cadence that made Sirius’ lungs tighten involuntarily.

“Same shit, different vehicle. I think you’ll be alright Sirius.” He smiled then, the same plain curve of bowed lips that had struck Sirius right behind his ribs when he saw it from the stage the first time. Sirius smiled back, his thoughts infinitesimally lighter on their wings of gin and wine, languid and pleasant—he was powerless to stop it as he felt the army of his unconscious thought boarding his mental ship in all-out emotional mutiny.

“Stop me if you’ve heard this one, Remus,” he found himself saying, leaning in slightly, ever closer to the strange magnetism of Remus, “but are you queer?”

Not enough wherewithal to register than he probably just figuratively shot his own leg off, seeing not horror or confusion in those too-green eyes but a flash of camaraderie, was it? Or something closer to at least recognition. Sirius was holding his breath without meaning to, but his pulse had begun roaring in his ears and he needed the rest of his body to try and be as still as possible to hear, no, even just to _perceive_ the bloody quietude that was Remus.

“Observant,” came the reply after a breathless moment, enigmatic to Sirius’ drunkenness but allowing Sirius at least the concrete deliverance from _No_ or something worse. Sirius let himself exhale a tentative little stream of air through his nose, his jaw still clenched with anticipation, as Remus lit another cigarette and offered another one to him in a single motion. “Bisexual,” he said finally, stirring a bright gold chord in Sirius’ belly. “Alice was the only genuinely serious relationship I’ve had, but I’ve dated men as well.”

Sirius’ tongue felt too-dry as he took a drag on the fresh cigarette—plain loose tobacco again, which made him remember idly that he wanted to try the ritual of rolling his own sometime—and he exhaled impatiently while his brain drifted awash with a jumble of emotions skirting the edges of Mostly Good. “I like just blokes,” he blurted unevenly. Remus chuckled to himself, and in it Sirius could feel the exact moment his reality shifted its tracks toward chasing a new sort of destination. _Fuck friendship, fuck normalcy, this is madness; this can’t be anything besides blatant, burning, gods-be-damned adoration—_

“Can I consider myself ‘just blokes’ then?” he asked softly, and Sirius was probably imagining the tender tentativeness in Remus’ voice, dreaming up the depth in those interrogative, lovely, disastrous eyes. His mind fell dumb in a wash of white noise.

“You—yes, yeah, please, if you want to,” Sirius stammered. He winced and dropped the cigarette between his fingers to the ground as a sudden sear of his magic ate through the rest of its papered length in a split second. Sirius could feel a flash of strength humming in his arms, radiating out from his core like a reactor. _Holy shit, so much for floodgates_.

“I think that would be ideal,” Remus hummed, politely saying nothing about Sirius’ awkward shock of energy but not moving back away from him. They were less than a hand’s length apart, alone on the edge of the trail and tucked into the dark besides. Sirius could reach out and brush aside that errant piece of hair tripping down Remus’ temple, could feel the warmth of his face against his own fingertips, could discover the reality of tens of things that he had been spinning idly through his head like an empty turntable since he first laid his bloody eyes on Remus fucking Lupin—

Sirius must have looked utterly distracted and slightly baffled amid the potent concoction of feelings racketing around his mind, because he hurtled back to ground with a hammering heart when he heard Remus murmur, “Sirius, I would quite like to kiss you.”

“Fuckin’ cheers,” Sirius breathed after taking a thoughtless second to catalogue the fact that yes, this was bold reality. Still struck frozen by his immeasurable soaring luck, he could only reach up and clutch at Remus’ elbow as the other man leaned forward to close the distance between them.

It was, if Sirius was being honest with himself, the largest influx of feeling he had faced since hearing of the accident in January. Remus’ mouth was surprisingly soft, fitting against his own in steady exploration like the loveliest sort of match. From so near he smelled overwhelmingly of Well-Groomed Man with a heavy undercurrent of the sylvan cologne Sirius had sampled by accident back at the gallery. Remus’ arm through the sleeve Sirius had held to like a portkey was grounding in its warmth. He tasted of whiskey.

They kissed slowly, and Sirius registered Remus’ hand idly gripped into the lapel of his sport coat. He moved his own listless left hand to cradle the back of Remus’ neck where the wave of his hair tapered off—which was apparently much appreciated, for he then felt Remus shiver slightly and run his tongue along Sirius’ bottom lip. Sirius invited the change with a tilt of his head as he slid closer to Remus on the bench. They separated in a moment for short puffs of breath.

“Truth of the matter?” Remus whispered, slightly labored, “I’ve been wanting to do that since I saw you nursing that beer alone at the pub on the first night.”

“And I nearly talked myself out of this because you told me you almost married a woman,” Sirius replied immediately, sharing the little leap of breathless laughter that passed between them.

“I’m a terrible conversationalist, honestly,” Remus said as he reached up to draw a thumb across the hollow of Sirius’ cheek.

“That isn’t true, but this solution of the contrary is much appreciated.” Sirius closed his eyes to meet Remus’ mouth with his again, an ounce more surety amid them now that emboldened his hold on the other man to knit his fingers softly into a twist of hair where they rested. His heart was liable to hammer itself out of his ribcage and his limbs were singing with coils of tension, but Sirius was feeling existence so far above its normal grade of At Least I’m Breathing At All that it suffused the whole affair with perfection instead of panic.

They kissed for several minutes more, and Sirius only made the extremely difficult and hard-won decision to pull away for more than a couple breaths when he felt that he and Remus were very soon approaching the event horizon of one of them crawling on top of the other.

“This is absolutely lovely and I hate to cut it short, but I would rather not debauch a public bench,” Sirius murmured. Remus cheeks were already flushed with the charge of arousal, but they tipped a shade darker.

“You make a solid point.” Remus’ eyes were almost impossibly greener, a deep moss lit afire with affection. He adjusted his own collar demurely before fixing the fall of Sirius’ sport coat and tucking an escaped strand of black hair behind his ear. “I propose a motion to continue this at a later date then, at a different location to be decided.”

“Hear-hear,” Sirius replied, untying his entire fall of hair to knot it back up again more neatly. His insides thrilled quietly at the way Remus watched with a hungry-looking set to his jaw. “Ideas?”

“Saturday evening,” Remus said immediately. “I’m playing at a pub just outside of town owned by an old friend. I can send you the Floo information tomorrow.” He cleared his throat and unconsciously ran a hand through his own hair. “I’d—enjoy it if you could come to listen.”

“I’d enjoy that as well,” Sirius said smoothly, _Merlin stricken, haven’t heard THAT tone of voice show up in months_. 

“Then we have a decision; all in favor?” Remus announced as he stood and held out a hand to pull Sirius up as well. Before Sirius could gather breath to say “Aye,” he found himself maneuvered into another final kiss by Remus. They pressed close, warm, even for height and gripping with the promise of farewell at one another’s waists.

“…by which I mean, I’ll see you on Saturday,” Remus said softly when he pulled himself back and took a half-step away from Sirius. They met eyes and held the gaze for a brief moment before Remus broke with a spasmodic little huff of laughter. “I—yeah. I’ll see you on Saturday, Sirius.”

“Will do, goodnight,” Sirius said with his own smile, waving shortly as Remus turned and started out of the park with a brisk walk. He stood watching the retreat for a minute, grateful Remus didn’t turn around to steal a last glance, before he sat heavily on the bench again with a sigh.

Sirius’ thoughts were white noise, the pleasant sort that he knew some people used to help sleep. He had been wrong all along and worked up about nothing, almost completely blew the chance to be invited into the absolute gift of Remus’ presence because of his own nearsightedness. Sirius heaved another deep, cleansing sigh and couldn't hold back a giddy chuckle at the humming current of happiness he felt threading through his veins. The pessimist in him had, at least temporarily, been shut up tight underneath his contentment.

Sirius leaned back and crossed his right ankle onto his left knee, drawing his phone out from the inside of his jacket. He thumbed through to his and Marlene’s messaging stream and thought for a moment with his thumbs above the keyboard before deciding on the best way to put it.

**your divination exam must have gone well. pick a place to eat, mckinnon.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! I'm really enjoying pacing the duo out in this one, I hope you all do too :)


	5. Verse 5 - Rondo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Old memories feel like bitter dregs, but warmth and friends and smaller alleys might help alongside a damn fine set.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Playlist for "9" is available at https://open.spotify.com/user/spontaneousness/playlist/7M9d9BUDdlIyYw0X9pHYNi

_setlist 1 April for Hagrid’s_

_!remember to call Dorcas for cello!_

_Coconut Skins  
_ _Lonelily  
_ _Volcano  
_ _Older Chests_

_—_

Layers of darkness made from rotting onion skins suffused the woods around him like a coffin. Breath felt hard to draw, and a mounting sense of unease was bleeding through Sirius’ skull into his limbs. Inexplicable pain battered his chest with each step, as if his muscles were tightening against the underside of his skin to twist into impossible shapes in a grotesque compression of existence, but still he walked onward. There was something in the heart of this black-leaved forest he needed to seek with his bones.

As Sirius moved deeper into the midnight carpet of wet woodland offal, the smell of it all slowly shifted from decomposing wood to an acrid stink of metal and rubber. The stench was overbearing, invading and choking like billowing clouds of licking, shimmering gasoline smoke. He could feel tears of black oil crawling out of his eyes, but still he trudged forward with stuttering steps. By the time he had been reduced to a crawl with the indomitable pain of it all, Sirius emerged into a clearing.

A twisted mess of ruined car was smoldering weak in the center of a fairy circle—mushrooms charred to cinders with the evidence of having burned for long, long time. Sirius lo _oked on with mute horror, he was too late, he raked the twisted image in front of him for a sign of life, felt terror grip and twist his guts when his eyes landed on the pale, death-still arm with a raven tattooed at the elbow reaching out of the driver’s window in a final plea for deliverance—_

Sucking in a waking gasp stabbed Sirius’ lungs like needlepoint. He felt the tears on his cheeks in desperation before he knew what they were, pawed at them blindly and let a neutral sob jump out of him when he found with relief they were just tears and not the sickening amber-black motor oil he had feared. He rested the back of his hand on his forehead as he sucked in shuddering breaths and stared unseeing through a fog of stale tears up at the ceiling to center himself. It had been three days without a nightmare, and it stung like a vague insult to wake from one after such brief respite.

The buzz of his mobile phone on his nightstand rattled out, and Sirius groped automatically to the left to pick it up while he continued to trying to train his breathing down to normal. His heart leapt with a strange mix of contentment added to its racing pace when he saw Remus’ number on the notification.

_Morning!  
_ _Thanks again for a wonderful evening, I’m looking forward to Saturday :)  
_ _Floo address is Cerberus And Jabberwock_

The screen showed a fourth message from him was being typed out. Sirius stared at the text and tried to imagine the words in Remus’ voice, wondering through his steadying sniffling what sort of morning fogginess coated that lilting tenor just after 8 o’clock if any at all.

_Also eager to perhaps see how much lovelier is it to snog you without being toasted x_

A spasm of freeing laughter jumped from Sirius’ lungs, taking with it a hefty measure of the leaden weight deadening his guts. Perhaps _that_ was the reason for the nightmare rearing up now, a preoccupation he had very consciously shoved to the deepest back reaches of his mind before falling asleep full of the unknowing of whether Remus would still be attracted to him without several drinks in them both. The message was, despite how petty and schoolgirlish it made Sirius feel, comforting. He already felt his breathing calming itself as he thought up a reply.

**cheers (:  
** **though it will be a feat to have to wait until your set is done to do it**

_Patience is a virtue ;)_

Sirius set his mobile down with a vague little grin, smudging away the rest of the remnants of his fitful waking tears with the heels of his hands. His feelings felt completely at odds with themselves, but be it as it may he knew it was better than feeling nothing anymore. Moving back into a sprawl across his mattress, a white-hot twist of arousal had staked itself back into Sirius’ hips as he recalled the sensation of kissing Remus last night. He stretched with a mild yawn, buried his face sideways into one of his pillows, and reached down to bring himself off into the start of the morning again.

The carpet was especially soft beneath his feet when he stood eventually after letting the aftershocks of a surprisingly strong climax ebb away. The sun had a bit more gold in it from the window, the noiseless hum of the town outside struck blue-white chords in Sirius’ chest, and it didn’t hurt to think of facing the day ahead of him. At _all._

“Accio wand,” he muttered, extending his hand slightly away from him to avoid being smacked in the face with unexpected force as he been so many times as a student. His wand flew into his palm from the opposite end of his bed on the floor, and he turned it over through his fingers with pensive curiosity. He stood up and faced the scattered blankets, leveling his arm solidly and taking a deep breath.

“Locomotor sheets,” Sirius announced evenly, stumbling slightly when the long-absent coiling of power unfolded in a steady furl from his heart and down through his left arm into the hilt of his wand. The invisible tendrils of magic erupted from the wood in a stutter, as if was scraping off a built-up crust of disuse within its core. Sirius clenched his jaw and titled the power ever so slightly, envisioning the weft and wind of a tidy bed making itself. After an empty second of an audible sputtering fizz from his wand tip, gloriously, the expanse of his white sheets and slate-grey coverlet began floating into order. Sirius couldn’t help the wide smile that spread across his cheeks—he felt of a flash of being 11 again, unaware and blissfully free of the trappings of depressive existence.

The taste of using magic thrummed through Sirius like a ringing string. There was more he could do around the flat, surely—clothes spelled clean, de-wrinkled, looped gracefully onto hangers and lined up in the ranks of his closet; empty mugs and glasses accrued on tabletops in the bedroom and living room, lifted in an arc into the kitchen sink and washed with a virile Aguamenti that made Sirius feel like twice more of a wizard again; pillows on the sofas fluffed from a distance and furniture rearranged with the flick of his wrist for a bit of a change. If he had watched somebody else capering about like this he probably would have thought they were certifiable. But in the moment, it was phenomenal.

After twenty minutes the flat looked far more put together. _Happier_. Sirius found he was breathing slightly harder, his cheeks making themselves felt with the foreign flex of a smile digging into them for the longest consecutive stretch of time in months. He turned his wand over in his grip and tenderly thumbed at the handle, ready to set in on perhaps charming the walls a different color, when his eyes landed on the closed door across from the newly-placed love seat.

Sirius’ flat was a two-bedroom, a rash decision Sirius had made as a final act of defiance when signing the lease for his first truly self-owned piece of anything— _Oh, yes, but of course_ , he’d had the space to house any relatives passing through, but he wouldn’t have actually put them up even if the corpse of the Dark Lord himself had leveled a killing curse at his chest. Maybe only Regulus, for a day or two at most, but that ship had sailed even before he’d died. The second bedroom had become a studio of sorts, where he had a large window that faced south-west and got lovely light in the late afternoon. He used to sketch for hours when he was first settling in to the place, immortalizing the stretch of the town outside with occasional leaps of church spires stabbing victoriously up through the placid skyline like a heart monitor on its hum of life. Naturally, the door had remained shut and locked since Sirius began this unceasing moratorium on his talents. He couldn’t remember what was on the easel inside, probably more than a little sun-bleached after almost three-and-a-half months. He wasn’t sure he wanted to remember right now.

But Sirius’ greater thought processes were apparently overriding his inherent will, for he moved toward the door and had his wand touched to the handle before he could register the motion. A murmured “Alohamora” replied with a little click from within the jamb, and Sirius stole one last moment of suspended peace before he pulled up on the handle and pushed open the simple white door.

The easel always faced away from the entrance, so Sirius was hit with the tense mystery of fluttering charcoal paper and deafening silence. The hard wood beneath his feet creaked with displacement as it tended to do across the entire flat, but it felt hollower in this room. The undeniable feeling of stillness prickled Sirius’ skin as he watched dust motes float through the shaft of weak, indirect light floating in through half-closed shades. This was a mausoleum. For more reasons than one.

The phantom aching remnants of his nightmare growled at the base of Sirius’ skull as he slowly moved to the front of the easel. There, right where he had left it, was the mockup design for a second tattoo for Regulus, meant to adorn his left arm as a twin to his right. The one his brother had already gotten done last year was a perched raven, regal and reflective of the only part of their family crest that didn’t indicate some sort of hate or disgust. Reg’s plan had been to get all three of the ravens from the moldering old tapestry on his body—right arm, left arm, third one over his heart—and all designed by Sirius. Their relationship had been tense and strange growing up, but Regulus’ deep appreciation for Sirius’ art was always a returning point despite his constant flares of anger and bitterness. It was part of the reason that Alford’s sudden change to his will and Regulus’ sudden death had ripped so deeply in combination; it had finally felt like maybe the two of them could have been _brotherly_ again.

The raven on the paper in front of Sirius now had its wings swept out in preparation for flight. The way he had constructed the shape of its feathers was nearly air itself, a graceful arc of anticipation that would have flowed up from the bend of Regulus’ elbow and into his tricep. The raven stared off the page with an intent predator’s eye. Sirius felt the hand of belated grief clench tight at his throat, tears building up along his lashes, as he stared back.

“Fucking hell, Reg,” he choked out to the empty air, sniffling deeply and clearing the threat of tears with a withered sigh. “Still uncovering your shit even now.” Sirius reached out to draw a finger down the page, felt the faint grooves of his pen strokes under the long-dried ink, as his feelings boiled underneath the microscopic valleys of his fingerprints. He stared at the illustration for a moment longer and let the craving to create smolder at the depth of his heart like addictive hunger until he could feel the stress of his teeth pressing together where he clenched his jaw.

“Right,” he suddenly exclaimed, collecting himself with a huff and a blank, resolute nod. He left the room with longs strides, leaving the door open as he went, and collected his shoes and a pair of sunglasses from near the front door. Sirius grabbed his keys, the haphazard feeling of purpose racking through him like the building throb of a hummingbird’s wings that he was determined not to let fly away before he could tame it. He locked the front door swiftly behind him as he descended the stairs to the ground floor two at a time. The sun glared white when he stepped out onto the sidewalk and took an automatic left turn in a beeline. He was halfway to his destination before he realized he had forgotten to bring his cigarettes with him, but one driving need had replaced the other for the time being.

Sirius Black was going to put pen to paper again.

—

After fetching a cobbled phalanx of supplies from the Muggle art shop—two new sketchbooks, a set of pens, a folio of drawing paper, and a fresh box of charcoal, all purchased with monosyllabic propriety from a bored-looking clerk—Sirius stumbled back into his flat with full arms and a mind brimming over with determination. He toed the front door shut behind him as he hauled the supplies back to the studio room, laying them all out on the floor beneath the window. Sirius opened the thin closet to the left of the easel and pulled out a large portfolio, which he patently did not allot the time to look through for the ripping teeth of bitter nostalgia held inside that he knew would tear at him unnecessarily. He reverently tucked the raven sketch between two sheets of blank paper and slid it into the portfolio. _Put it all to rest until it stops hurting so badly._

Once the portfolio was replaced safely in the back of the closet, Sirius propped the new pad of drawing paper on the easel. He set the box of charcoal and pens on the side table that had lain empty for so long, and the sight of prepared potential made hope flutter in him like a Bluebell flame. Sirius stared at the empty page and then out the window, absorbing the distant humming sound of the town through the closed glass. He checked his watch compulsively, uselessly—there was nothing in the world for which to arrive late today. Sirius didn’t have a single excuse left in the grooves of his brain.

He sighed as he sat down on the edge of the padded stool before the easel. Cracking open the new case of charcoal felt like revealing a secret, and feeling the fresh stick of it between his fingers like a tiny, promise-laden wand after so long was a new a kind of exhilaration. Sirius touched it to the paper and dragged out a short line with an easy smile finding its way to his lips. It felt, he decided, even better than casting spells.

—

Over the next three days, Sirius filled twenty sheets of paper with the etched black evidence of returning instinct. The studies were all slightly different angles of the view outside from where he sat, but with each iteration he had felt his artistic wherewithal coming home bit by bit. It was edifying.

This low-lit Saturday evening Sirius left his day’s pieces on the easel, intent on readdressing them steadily as his fingers got used to drawing again. He showered quickly, washing the smudges of black from his fingers in ritualistic happiness, and dressed in the same variant of casual effort he had presented around Remus for the past couple weeks. Comfort worked; it still felt strange to look forward to being around others again like this. Sirius had a flash of fond remembrance while he fussed with his hair in the mirror—his mind’s eye ran ardently over the look of abject want on Remus’ face on Wednesday night when he had raked his hair up and back into it’s tie-up. Sirius decided on a sort of chignon that took far more effort to look uncaringly tousled than he expected.

Sirius stood in the vague aimless feeling of Dressed With Nowhere To Be for a moment, inwardly surveying his feelings with close attention. He could honestly say to himself that he was at some kind of peace, with the normally-snarled twine of his emotions running in even, silky lines up through his heart. If he had known that drawing in earnest again could help soothe so much, he would have picked it up again in February.

Sirius pocketed his mobile on the other end of the room, triple-checking the time and deciding it would be fine to arrive a bit closer to on time than his normal tendency of fashionably late. He and Remus had exchanged short bursts of messages for the past couple of days, pleasant little things suffused with tart notes of flirtation mostly volleyed from Remus’ end of the conversation—Sirius had been more than a bit toasted the previous evening after Marlene’s victory dinner at a nearby Italian place with impeccable house chianti, and he had been shocked into blushed arousal he was glad the phone made faceless when Remus sent something along the lines of _Careful, I’ve had more than a few thoughts about park benches_. In order to keep from devolving into some kind of nervous and amorous pile of jelly this evening, Sirius wanted to make sure he had a bit to drink in him before facing the solar flare of Remus’ talent.

Sirius descended the stairs in a gait that was more tentative skip than carefree jaunt, for despite all the lightness he was feeling lately he still couldn’t shake the underlying hum of anxiety. It was fine. He would be fine. He would just need to find a way to think around it eventually. He stepped into the hearth on the ground level, glamoured as a locked utility closet just to be sure none of the Muggle tenants ever had the idea to light a fire and accidentally shut off the route home for any of the four wizards who lived there. Sirius clenched his fingers around the floo powder, enjoying the grit of it in his palm.

“Cerberus and Jabberwock,” Sirius announced before a flash of green overtook him, through which he wasn’t quite sure if the flipping feeling in his guts was the pitch of travel or the roiling concoction of disastrous, beautiful eagerness.

The first thing that emerged through Sirius’ senses as his hearing returned before his vision was a roar of laughter. Clattering glasses and the sound folky music filtered in, and Sirius blinked a waft of ashes from his eyes and stepped out of the fireplace into the glow of the pub. Lots of bearded wizards and several witches with free, loud laughter were crammed at heavy-topped tables littered with beer steins. It smelled of autumn, despite the season outside. Sirius’ face felt pleasantly warmed.

“Sirius!”

His ears pricked like Roman candles and his attention snapped to the right, landing on the calling presence of Remus as if he had collapsed the universe around him in a dying star. Sirius drew up every ounce of care in him to not trip over his feet as he made his way over. It was a smaller table in the corner filled by three other people besides Remus, who was wearing a linen shirt that caused Sirius to fiercely ignore the way the open top button begged him to look at the golden glow of skin there. Remus pulled Sirius into a one-armed embrace of greeting, heedless of the attention of anybody else and with one hand still gripping his pint on the tabletop. Sirius returned it gratefully albeit with subtlety. He didn’t pass up the opportunity to inhale Remus’ closeness with secretive pleasure before they pulled apart again after a moment that felt too brief.

“This is Arthur and Molly Weasley, old friends—” Remus gestured to the handsome ginger couple across from them as they smiled eagerly, “and this is Xeno Lovegood. He teaches Advanced Composition and Rhetoric at the university.” The strong-jawed wizard with blonde hair hanging down to his shoulders nodded towards him with the ghost of smile, and Sirius had the thought that he would be and entirely intimidating professor to have.

“It’s always good to se a new face coming ‘round to hear Remus perform!” Molly all but gushed, with a tone that betrayed immediately the fact she was a mother already. “Here it used to be mostly just a lot of us who used to live in Ireland, but Remus has started to drag in some colleagues from the university and curious students here and there. We welcome it all!”

“And this is Dorcas Meadowes, she and I probably learned how to walk together. She’s also from Wexford, but she’s been in this town since we were fourth years,” Remus said after politely waiting for Molly to finish, indicating the willowy brunette who had just returned to her seat between Arthur and Xeno.

“I learned how to run first,” she said simply, smirking with a friendly wink at Sirius as she sipped the head off of her fresh pint.

“She plays the cello, she’ll be hopping on for some of my set tonight,” Remus continued through a chuckle. Dorcas’ eyebrows shot up and she leaned her elbows on the table.

“Oh, will I? Are you going to _pay_ me this time, Lupin?”

“In tender brotherly love, you twat. Worth its weight in gold.”

“Like fuck, unless it can buy me beer! I’ll play all the wrong notes.”

“Alright, alright, you’re on the tab too.” Remus put his hands up in mock surrender through another earnest laugh. Sirius found himself acclimating quite fondly to the warmth of it all.

“Sirius, you were at Hogwarts at the same time as us, yes? You look somewhat familiar.” Xeno had directed pinning attention to Sirius from the wings of the conversation, further solidifying Sirius’ surety that this man would be a force to be reckoned with in a lecture hall.

“Possibly? I finished around, about eight years ago. I was in Gryffindor, mostly—ah, mostly kept to myself, small circle of friends and that. Most of my family was in Slytherin, so I…tended to want to blend in with the curtains a little.” Sirius felt the stammering verbal waterfall happening and was powerless to stop it, grateful for his cheeks already having pinked from the air so the flush of his embarassment wasn’t half as evident.

“Wait, we were in the same House?” Remus said softly, an interjection colored with an unnamed intimacy that arrested Sirius’ attention in a clattering meeting of their gazes—the moment was shattered suddenly when Arthur scoffed.

“Merlin blitzed, however did you survive a family full of Slytherins?” His wife elbowed him none too softly, but Sirius accepted the verbal jab with all the tired grace that came from having to weather the theatre of life in general for a quarter of a century.

“Yeah,” he sighed, “I—Black. Sirius Black.”

A general and silent flurry of recognition flew around the table on a frequency Sirius was all too used to hearing like a dog whistle. His family was infamous for a fall from grace in his parents’ generation, aiding and abetting the failed overthrow of the Ministry. It was why he and Regulus had rebelled from all edges, from different corners; it was why Alford’s money had mattered so much for the loss of all their own amid the fallout of paying reparations.

“Well _you_ don’t seem like a tosser,” Dorcas said clearly, breaking the tension like a cleansing spell. Sirius let out a low, wry chuckle that thankfully invited the rest of the table into easement.

“Sorry, mate,” Arthur murmured, and Sirius waved it off airily. He was beyond being wounded by his family history. If he let it strike him so deeply every time it was brought up, he would have been nothing but a pile of bones by the time he was sixteen.

“Xeno, how goes Pandora with the baby? You’ve let her know she’s always welcome at ours for some help, haven’t you?” Molly cantered away with the conversation like a knobbly-kneed foal, for which Sirius was grateful and had a feeling Molly was very cognizant of what she was doing in favor of the atmosphere. He felt a warm hand find his knee under the table and nearly leapt from his place.

“Do you want a pint? You’re looking very strange and lonely without one,” Remus said in a tone one step lower than the rest of the room. Sirius appreciated the way everything Remus suggested was always tinged with teasing—talking with him was like the greatest kind of sport.

“Cure me then, O Keeper of the Tab,” Sirius replied, taking happiness at the way Remus’ smile spread like uncontrolled fire. He stood to fetch a pint for Sirius, but not before drawing a very purposeful and secretive thumb along the nape of Sirius’ neck beneath his dark twist of hair. When Sirius recovered from the second of stabbing attraction in his guts, he realized Dorcas had switched seats with Xeno to escape the crossfire of Molly’s talk and was now beside him to his right.

“Apologies in advance for the Weasleys, they mean well,” Dorcas muttered.

“Oh, no harm. They’re lovely, I’m sure.” Sirius wasn’t sure, but he always did his best to ignore the genetic impulse to judge the life out of anyone who crossed his path.

“So Remus has been more than a bit eager for you come along tonight.” Dorcas looked sideways at Sirius as she sipped deeply from her pint, and Sirius’ heart thrummed with the underpinnings of pride.

“Has he?”

“Why do you think he’s todging me along to play on the set tonight? Normally this a solo guitar haunt for him. His best songs need cello. He’s showing off.” She gave Sirius a blatant once-over from the corner of her eyes that made Sirius furrow his brow, but she shrugged in response to his obstinance. “It’s true, I’ve known him since before he even realized he liked blokes. Can read him from world away.”

“We’ve only seen each other three times before, it’s—”

“And Remus Lupin is a bleeding heart romantic. I’m not going to air his life story, but trust me when I say he won’t shy away from someone as pretty as you as long as you keep returning his calls.”

The descriptor of _Pretty_ rankled Sirius like acid curdling milk. It had sounded nice from Remus on Wednesday, but Dorcas’ voice was rasped and her manner was blunter than the worn-down edge of their table. He almost opened his mouth to spit back his own knifepoint response, but a pint thumped down in front of him and Remus slid back into the seat at his left. His presence seemed to quell Sirius’ demeanor by leagues.

“Summer ale,” Remus announced, his smile easy and reminding Sirius of high, wild grasses. “Despite the fact it’s only spring. Try it, it’s good.”

Sirius sipped from his glass and enjoyed the tang of the beer, a slight bite of citrusy rime that was indeed summery beyond measure. “That _is_ good, where from?”

“Barkeep brews it himself,” Dorcas said, “Hagrid grows all the hops and wheat, comes up with the recipes off the head. Now you’ve got me wanting summer, I’ll be right back.”

Dorcas got up for the bar, her long limbs unfolding gracefully. Sirius made sure she was far enough away in the dull roar of the pub before leaning closer to Remus in a low voice; “I don’t think she likes me very much.”

“She’s rough around the edges, sorry. I promise she thinks you’re just fine. She’s the one who said you don’t look like a tosser, remember?” Remus’ eyes were the brightest Sirius had ever seen them, lit with the sunny light of the pub from the outside and dancing with eagerness from within. Sirius had to bodily resist the urge to topple them both from their seats and snog the breath out of him right there on the floor. _Has no business being so bloody lovely—_

“Remus, settle a question, will you?” Arthur’s voice slid like smoke through the unsaid something building between Sirius and Remus, and Sirius was certainly not imagining the extra and purposeful second Remus took holding Sirius’ gaze before turning back to the rest of the table. “Molly thinks we’ve a boggart.”

They launched into a discussion of what could be lodging in Molly’s crawlspace as Dorcas returned with two pints. She slid the darker of the two over to Sirius despite his current full glass and shrugged with a natural motion that made it clear it was a staple in the vocabulary of her body language. “There’s an amber ale too, worth just as much of a try.”

Sirius raised the pint in Dorcas’ direction with an acquiescing grin and took a sip, enjoying the richer flavor and the gift of two full beers to himself. He recognized the itch of being proven wrong in the pit of his chest and was relieved he hadn’t snapped at Dorcas earlier and fucked something up. Sirius faced the topic at the table contentedly. It felt very natural to be perched beside Remus.

The table of five followed the conversation through dips and turns of camaraderie, well-worn for Remus and his old friends and newly-comfortable for Sirius. Arthur had a lively discovery of debate with Sirius regarding the primacy of Muggle painters in the nineteenth century, Xeno and Remus grilled Dorcas about her penchant for pulp novels, and they all grinned and bore their way through a meandering story from Molly about their eldest son who was only a year away from his Hogwarts letter and yet had apparently managed for a _second_ time to smuggle a baby dragon into their kitchen.

“Right then, Dorcas?” Remus stood up soon after a quick quip about the small but dangerous creature keeping away household hinkypunks, quaffing the remainder of his pint and jerking his head toward the stage just to the left of their table. 

“Ready whenever you are, ‘vourneen,” Dorcas replied with an impish grin as Remus rolled his eyes.

“Pull that charmed cello out of your arse, let’s set up,” he said over his shoulder, stepping up onto the stage and retrieving his guitar case from near the wall. Dorcas slid out of her own chair and pulled a small oblong box from her back pocket, waggling her eyebrows playfully at Sirius as he watched when she drew out her wand as well and tapped the weird little shape shortly. It ballooned into a full-sized instrument case, a ridiculous-looking burst of spacetime that she had clearly caused many times due to the way she was able to control the shift of size in one hand and still continue legging up on the raised wooden platform. The two got to making themselves comfortable in front of the pub like they had been doing it for years.

“You’re in for a treat,” Molly said with friendly reverence, nodding toward the stage. “It’s like the two of ‘em have charmed voice boxes or something.” Xeno snorted good-naturedly and knocked back a shot from a flask Sirius noticed him storing in the inner pocket of his jacket.

“That’s the point, Molly dear,” he said, accepting her sisterly scowl with the same barely-there smile that he had offered when Sirius had first approached the table. Sirius conceded a chuckle, turned to the stage, and watched the quick setup of the duo turn to readiness within a minute. Remus stood with his guitar like an extension of his body, and Dorcas had her cello propped between her knees looking over at him to her right expectantly. They hadn’t cast any amplification charms tonight, and the pub seemed to know it. The quiet that fell over them was welcoming.

“Hallo, welcome to Saturday,” Remus said with a smile, letting his eyes flicker to Sirius was a giddy flash as they swept the audience. Sirius felt his blood hum pleasantly in his wrists. “Here’s some music for you.”

Their first song opened with a lively strumming pattern from Remus, complemented after a phrase by Dorcas following on a sturdy, rollicking bass line:

_“You can hold her hand_ _  
_ _And show her how you cry,_ _  
_ _Explain to her your weakness so she understands_ _  
_ _And then roll over and die;_ _  
_

_You can brave decisions_ _  
_ _Before you crumble up inside,_ _  
_ _Spend your time asking everyone else's permission_ _  
_ _Then run away and hide._ _  
_

_You can sit on chimneys_ _  
_ _With some fire up your ass;_ _  
_ _No need to know what you're doing or waiting for,_ _  
_ _But if ever anyone should ask_ _  
_

_Tell them, I've been licking coconut skins,_ _  
_ _And we've been hanging out._ _  
_ _Tell them, God just dropped by to forgive our sins,_ _  
_ _And relieve us our doubt;_

_La-da-la la la la-la…”_

Sirius was captivated. He vaguely registered the comfort and pride emanating from Molly, Arthur, and Xeno, but his most precious wherewithal was focused entirely on the phenomenon of Remus making music. The carefree ferocity of the song sat so unbelievably well with the way Remus carried himself—smiling through the lyrics, vibrant and alive, seeming to light up the air surrounding him with warmth.

_“You can hold her eggs,_ _  
_ _But your basket has a hole—_ _  
_ _You can lie between her legs and go looking for,_ _  
_ _Tell her you're searching for her soul._ _  
_

_You can wait for ages,_ _  
_ _Watch your compost turn to coal,_ _  
_ _But time is contagious_ _  
_ _And everybody's getting old._ _  
_

_So you can sit on chimneys_ _  
_ _With some fire up your ass;_ _  
_ _No need to know what you're doing or looking for,_ _  
_ _But if ever anyone should ask_ _  
_

_Tell them, I've been cooking coconut skins,_ _  
_ _And we've been hanging out._ _  
_ _Tell them, God just dropped by to forgive our sins,_ _  
_ _And relieve us our doubt;_

_La-da-la la la la-la…”_

Sirius kept his eyes on the stage as he moved silently to draw a tiny sketchbook from the breast pocket of his shirt—he had found the little folio in the storage closet in the spare room, the first couple pages sketched with old nature studies from the park outside of Marlene’s building from two summers ago. The rest had been left empty since his purge of creative flow in the winter, free now for his fairly constant pour of the urge to commit beautiful things to the page with simple strokes of ink. The pen tucked into a loop at its outer edge slid out silently and connected with the blank page in front of him like a secretive kiss as Sirius started drawing.

The song closed with a deep strum from Remus and a long bow stroke from Dorcas, both of them sharing a smile that was clearly infectious as the pub applauded with gruff cheer. Molly let fly a whistle from her looped fingers, and Sirius caught the curve of Remus’ lips in the beginnings of a portrait like a whispered spell.

“Thank you, thanks for listening so far,” Remus said. “I swear, we have no sad songs tonight— _well_ , melancholy, because I’m nothing if not Remus—” a little laugh chained through the audience while Sirius felt foreign warmth suffuse his insides with the clarity that Remus was the golden child of this pub. Remus chuckled like dark brandy. “No, not sad. Promise. Cheers, here’s our next one.

_“I gave me away, I could have knocked off the evening  
_ _But I lonelily landed my waltz in her hands;  
_ _In a way, I felt you were leaving me  
_ _I was sure I wouldn't find you at home—_

 _And you let me down, you could have knocked off the evening,  
_ _But you lonelily let him push under your bone;  
_ _You let me down, it's no use deceiving.  
_ _Neither of us wanna be alone,_

_And you're coming home…”_

Melancholy it certainly was, but in a pleasant way that made Sirius think of the vague freedom that used to come with summer in the countryside as a child when he would purposely lose himself in the tree line. He rendered the short, tousled waves of Remus’ hair with deft little flicks of his ink pen, enjoying perfectly the way his choice of a three quarter turn allowed him to sketch the curve of Remus’ neck. A deep voice cleared its throat to his left and Sirius suddenly looked up, feeling the glimmer of awareness lance itself through the buttery flow of the three-pattern being woven onstage.

“You’re a very good artist,” Xeno murmured just below the volume of the music so only he and Sirius were privy. The solemn blonde nodded modestly to Sirius’ open sketchbook—Sirius felt himself blush despite his determination not to. “You like him a lot, I can tell.”

Sirius felt his face sear further crimson, flushing down the sides of his neck, and a small voice at the back of his head admonished his paleness and its propensity to betray every inch of his feelings.

"His mother is a painter, he told you that, right?" Xeno looked between him and the mocked-up sketch like a study specimen, an excerpt of prose meant to be picked apart at his leisure; not cruel or cold, but certainly not warm. Sirius couldn't tell what to think of the strange personality, notwithstanding the fact he apparently had a wife and a baby to boot. 

"He did," Sirius replied as the applause swelled with a happy smatter, and he put down his pen briefly to add his own hands to the mix. "I only do ink and charcoal though," he continued in short explanation just over the sound of his hands. 

"It's really nice," Xeno said with a matter-of-fact nod. "You should show him when he's done with the set."

Sirius hummed out a strained sound of noncommitance, drowning out the evidence of his floundering with a deep sip of beer. 

"Thank you," Remus called from the stage, the smile on his face pleased and kind. "We've got two more for you all, you've been lovely."

He and Dorcas started in on the third song then, a bit of a deeper groove sitting in the way Remus strummed and played off of Dorcas' interjectory melody. The carriage of the tune was still up-beat but it laid itself lower in its counts, like a chaise lounge. 

_Don't hold yourself like that,_ _  
_ _You'll hurt your knees._ _  
_ _I kissed your mouth and back,_ _  
_ _But that's all I need;_ _  
_ _Don't build your world around volcanoes melt you down._ _  
_

_What I am to you is not real,_ _  
_ _What I am to you you do not need—_ _  
_ _What I am to you is not what you mean to me,_ _  
_ _You give me miles and miles of mountains_ _  
_ _And I'll ask for the sea…_

As Dorcas took her own verse after the chorus, the timbre of her voice breaking away pleasantly from the well-wrought duet with Remus, Sirius let his pen strokes gather themselves into the consummate loveliness of Remus strumming along with second-nature concentration. The frame in time of the portrait he had snapped up of Remus' face was one with a soft smile, somewhere between an intake of breath for the next line and a glance down at his fingers, and it made Sirius insides glow faintly to see it coming to life. This was dangerous; this was fucking wonderful.

_…What I am to you is not real,_  
What I am to you you do not need—  
What I am to you is not what you mean to me,  
You give me miles and miles of mountains  
And I'll ask for;

_What I give to you_ _  
_ _Is just what I'm going through,_ _  
_ _This is nothing new,_ _  
_ _No, no, just another phase of finding what I really need_ _  
_

_Is what makes me bleed,_ _  
_ _And like a new disease she's still too young to treat._ _  
_ _Volcanoes melt me down;_ _  
_ _She's still too young;_ _  
_

_I kissed your mouth;_ _  
_ _You do not need me._

The details to each shadow and fold across the lines of Remus' carriage on the page welled from Sirius' pen in an easy flow, and as this third song whisped itself away into finality Sirius closed the sketchbook like a secretive prize in tidy, unannounced completion. He noticed Xeno watch him pocket the little book again and threw him a stuttery, wan smile— _I'd show him if I was sure I could stand it myself,_ he thought inwardly through a draining draught of the summer ale. 

"Once again," Remus' voice sprang lithe from the stage above more applause and a few hearty whistles of encouragement, "thank you. We love playing here every now and again, we really do. Especially when Dorcas can be bothered to drag herself up here, eh?" A couple patrons chuckled knowingly, apparent regulars to these offerings of tune and poetry, as Dorcas made a rude but well-natured gesture with her cello bow. Remus laughed, bright and short, while the pit of Sirius' insides smoldered with glazed heat at the sound. 

"Cheers," Remus said as he turned back to the crowd, "Happy Saturday, here's our last one." He glanced up with his fingers set to the frets, a single ghost of a look and a hint of pride on the corner of his mouth as if to say _This is the best one, pay attention—_ when his eyes found Sirius' for a crackling second of purpose, Sirius knew then amid the warming strains of introductory plucking on those guitar strings that he was utterly helpless to falling into this enchantment.

For the first time in his life, Sirius was alright with the feeling of letting a bit of himself go.

_Older chests reveal themselves_ _  
_ _Like a crack in a wall,_ _  
_ _Starting small, and grow in time._ _  
_ _And we always seem to need the help_ _  
_ _Of someone else_ _  
_ _To mend that shelf—_ _  
_ _Too many books,_ _  
_ _Read me your favorite line._ _  
_

_Papa went to other lands_ _  
_ _And he found someone who understands_ _  
_ _The ticking, and the western man's need to cry._ _  
_ _He came back the other day, you know,_ _  
_ _Some things in life may change_ _  
_ _And some things_ _  
_ _They stay the same,_ _  
_

_Like time; there's always time_ _  
_ _On my mind._ _  
_ _So pass me by, I'll be fine._ _  
_ _Just give me time._ _  
_

_Older gents sit on the fence_ _  
_ _With their cap in hand,_ _  
_ _Looking grand;_ _  
_ _They watch their city change._ _  
_ _Children scream, or so it seems,_ _  
_ _Louder than before_ _  
_ _Out of doors, and into stores with bigger names._ _  
_ _Mama tried to wash their faces,_ _  
_ _But these kids, they lost their graces_ _  
_ _And daddy lost at the races too many times._ _  
_

_She broke down the other day, yeah you know,_ _  
_ _Some things in life may change_ _  
_ _But some things they stay the same,_ _  
_

_Like time; there's always time_ _  
_ _On my mind._ _  
_ _So pass me by, I'll be fine._ _  
_ _Just give me time._ _  
_ _Time; there’s always time_ _  
_ _On my mind._ _  
_ _Pass me by, I'll be fine._ _  
_ _Just give me time._

The song closed with a tremor of affection in Sirius’ core that felt like a razing storm to his very foundations, his palms stinging as he joined the raucous applause along with the rest of the pub. He allowed himself to let out a moderate whooping cheer, spiking his guts with giddiness for the abandon of it. It really had been the best song of the set, warm and deep and _fucking ruddy hell,_ Sirius wanted to kiss someone. Remus. He wanted to kiss the life out of Remus.

As the lights of the pub came back up around them, Remus and Dorcas shared a happy look, moving to stand at the edge of the stage beside each other for deep bows—Remus curling down around his guitar, Dorcas holding her cello beside her with neat, long limbs as she dipped forward. They had to take two more bows before the crowd would settle down and allow them to put their instruments away, conversations dissolving back to a dull roar as more drinks were ordered and stories were resumed.

“Cheers!” Arthur exclaimed when Remus and Dorcas approached the table again, making their way through several claps on the shoulders and satisfied nods from other pubgoers. Remus assumed his place beside Sirius again, his shoulders warm with their presence and matched with the lovely color that had sprung up just atop his cheekbones. Sirius swallowed around a tightness at the height of his throat for the grip of sudden emotion there; Remus looked absolutely fucking ecstatic.

“Cheers yourself, what did you think?” Remus asked, accepting a fresh pint from Molly and downing a hefty sip.

“Last one was my favorite,” Xeno said simply, and the rest of the table agreed vigorously. Sirius could feel his pulse pulling at his insides insistently, and his breath seemed to stutter when Remus turned to meet his eyes full-on. Sirius could only nod with barely-reigned fervor.

“Last one was top fucking drawer,” he blurted, and Dorcas broke into a spasm of laughter at his starkness. Remus’ eyes flared with a pleased glimmer, and Sirius felt his heart constrict with strange perfection. Remus turned briefly to the rest of the table, tapping his breast pocket vaguely.

“I’m off for a smoke, anybody coming?” He pinned each of his friends genially with an expectant look, received a soft decline from everyone. Dorcas was last and held up a hand, but not before purposefully catching Sirius’ eye and raising a subtle eyebrow along with the corner of her mouth. With automatic understanding, Sirius felt the spaces just behind his ears burn with excited embarassment.

“I’ll head out with you,” Sirius felt himself say when Remus rounded on him. The other man nodded with summation, tapped once open-handed on the tabletop, and pointed back toward the door that apparently led to the outdoor alcove just beyond the stage.

“We’ll be back, don’t close out yet,” he insisted. Dorcas snorted softly with a tone that Sirius managed to read as _Keep Telling Yourself That_ , and Sirius tried not to let his mind wander too wildly to secret possibilities as he followed Remus’ golden-tinted whorls of hair and lithe back in their weaves between the tables over to the door. The door opened with a faint squeak, and evening enveloped them like a quiet sigh.

Sirius’ eyes adjusted to the dark of this alley as the door bumped shut behind him, and his heart thrilled silently when he saw Remus ahead of him to his right slide a cigarette out of its case and light it fluidly with his thumb. Their alcove here was smaller, than at Albus’ pub, the sides of the buildings standing side-by-side to create it high and brick, pushing them closer to the sound of inside but also, blessedly, closer to one another at the same time. Remus smiled; Sirius wanted to kiss the curve of those lips until he could carve them from marble by memory. He held back, if only to keep up the semblance of not having unraveled completely.

“So we were in the same House,” Remus said simply, drawing a plume of smoke that wefted out his nose a moment later like floating rose petals.

“We were in the same House,” Sirius replied as he inclined his head in a conciliatory nod. He tried his best to ignore the careening feeling of possibility just behind his heart, repeating and reminding him in echoing ripples of _Night is for gentleness, night is for kisses, night is for truths._

“I’ve been wracking my brain trying to think if we ever bloody met, but I can’t remember ever seeing you anywhere,” Remus continued. The space between them was comfortable, crackling slightly with the same sense of affectionate challenge. Remus stared him down in a gaze that was at once lazy ease and adrenal glee rimed with hunger. “I would have remembered meeting you,” he murmured.

“I was only ever sort of good with Transfiguration, so it makes sense I never stood out. But I was _very_ good blending in,” Sirius said, his voice feeling slightly too loud and a bit out of place reflecting intimately between the flat, raised walls hugged in around them. _Quit talking to fill dead air, you git, just fucking kiss him—_

“Ah, well,” Remus’ sigh, light and content to cut through the chaff of Sirius’ inner voice, as he brushed a hand through his hair and leaned sideways against the wall behind him to invite Sirius along for the same. Sirius’ shoulder whispered on the grit of the hard surface that smelled faintly of earth when he accepted the opening. “I wouldn’t have known what to do if I’d met you back then anyways, I didn’t come around to liking men until I was nearly done there just after 16.” Remus smirked, and his eyes glittered with all the more strength. “Though you might have shocked me into early discovery.”

His words went straight to the lower surge of Sirius’ belly, and Sirius bit his lip to stifle a disbelieving leap of laughter. He stared down at the ground and scuffed the toe of his shoe against the dirt there. Several months ago he would have been appalled at his apparently inability to flirt back with gusto, but now Sirius was surprisingly alright with the feeling of bottomed-out, careening possibility that constricted any sort of delicious innuendos from forming in his mind. He couldn’t bring himself to look back up and see the way Remus was probably still peering at him—inquisitive, beautiful, _inviting._ There it was again, the open arms demeanor that so often suffused the way Remus felt to Sirius’ reawakening senses. It was new. Sirius could hardly comprehend the details of the way it made him feel. But Merlin-and-a-half, he had to say _something._

“You give me too much credit, I was half terrified of most things back then and covered it—poorly—with a whole mess of shitty bravado.”

“Now you’re giving _me_ too much credit,” Remus replied through a chuckle, “as if I wasn’t vain and shallow and terrible when I was teenager. _My_ way of covering all that adolescent terror.” He shrugged and nodded vaguely to himself. “Yeah, I would have stared at you and pined from a distance if I’d known you were there. Just as bloody gorgeous, I’m sure you were then as well.”

Sirius laughed openly at that, his insides spasming with disastrous adoration. “You’re one to talk! Back in there, through the whole set, I had to sketch you to get all the fucking tension out of me, and then some.”

“What?”

Remus had cocked his head to the side ever so slightly, the word tripping out on the dregs of a half-way laugh to mirror Sirius’ unconsciously, his lips still tugged up in pleasant geniality, and there was an edge of precarious intrigue glimmering at the corners of his eyes. Sirius suddenly felt the sketchbook burning its weight into his outer jacket pocket, and to his inner horror he reached for it without truly meaning to.

“I…I’ve started drawing again,” Sirius said, worrying the spine of the small book in his hand with pent-up nervousness. “It—here.”

He swiftly extended the small piece to Remus like a peace offering, as if it would quench at least an ounce of the roiling tension inside him. He felt like holding his breath as Remus crushed out the end of his cigarette with slow deliberation and gently accepted the sketchbook. From his periphery, Sirius could see Remus holding it like a flower petal. There was a suspended handful of long seconds as Sirius waited for a reaction after Remus closed it gingerly and passed it back to Sirius, who took it without directly meeting Remus’ eyes for all his fluttering nerves. The muted hum of the bar through the heavy wooden door accented their shared silence and the mounting discomfort in Sirius at refusing to speak first. He let the moment drag out like molasses before Remus let out a tight little sigh.

“Christ, Sirius, won’t you look at me,” He finally whispered, stirring to life the thrill of adoration deep in Sirius’ marrow. He turned to face Remus and caught one moment of a gaze filled with twinned nervous affection before they met in the quiet, automatic crush of a kiss.

Remus was warm, a different kind of warm than the air around them. In this much smaller alleyway, the need to press nearer felt more immediate than it had the other evening in the openness of the park. Here, paradoxically, it felt as if they would lose one another in the network of brick and loam if they left the space between them too wide. The fingers of Remus’ one hand— _Left? Right? Stroking thumb there, that’s left—_ were in Sirius’ hair, holding fast, while his other rested in a grounding and pleasantly firm grip at his waist. Sirius had only so far managed to hold both hands at either side of the height of Remus’ neck. They kissed as if the sun was collapsing. Remus tasted like smoky sweetness.

“It’s lovely,” Remus panted softly when they pulled apart for larger intakes of air after several stretched and glorious moments. “And I’m not just saying so because it’s me. Really, it’s—it’s very good.”

“I have to work my way back to where I left off,” Sirius replied, reveling in the sight of Remus’ darkened eyes and kiss-reddened lips, his eyes flicking rampantly across the planes of the classic beauty of Remus’ face. “Shame. I’ll just have to stare at you often for more portraits.”

“Ah, tragedy.” Remus moved forward ever so slightly to speak the word into the skin at the hollow of Sirius’ jaw right beneath his earlobe, unknowingly jotting intense, concentrated sensation straight down to Sirius’ hips. Sirius shifted them into a more ideal position then, pressing Remus’ back against the wall to their left and pouring a possessive kiss onto his mouth. The small sound of unfettered encouragement that fluttered out of Remus was heartening.

“Sorry,” Sirius whispered after another heady moment twining the wordless secret of closeness between them, “you hit a spot of mine.”

“Good, I had thought as much. Don’t apologize for doing exactly what I expected.” Remus levered the hand he now had at the small of Sirius’ back to pull him closer, and Sirius had to close to his eyes for a moment, biting down hard on his lip, to keep the dizzying feeling of arousal at bay as much as possible.

“I don’t want to shag in this alleyway, but I really want to keep snogging you,” Sirius hissed on a trembling breath. Remus laughed quietly, a champagne lightness of liquid gold, which made Sirius smile as well despite his rioting arousal. Remus moved his arms up to drape loosely over Sirius’ shoulders and pressed their foreheads together sweetly.

“Nobody’s stopping you from either,” in a murmur that fanned the flames in Sirius’ belly like gasoline fumes. “Your call, Sirius.”

“Come here,” the words left Sirius’ lips in a faint whisper, all that was remaining in his lungs with the fantastic loss of oxygen caused by the way Remus’ voice coiled itself around his name. It was his turn to hold Remus at the waist now, pulling them flush together in delicious necessity while Remus knit his fingers into the long dark hair cinched at Sirius’ neck. Sirius knew he would have to stop himself before letting things clamor too far out of their own hands—he didn’t trust his own stability quite yet to be able to keep his sanity together if he and Remus made it anywhere near a semblance of a mattress—but he let himself live in the moment of wondrous suspension that kept him enthralled on the graceful present of Remus’ immediacy.

After several minutes of wonderful, abject loveliness, Sirius felt a fundamental of awareness quiver to life at the pit of his stomach. He pulled himself back from a particularly indolent press of Remus’ warmth, their slightly-frantic embrace forcing them, crowded and tangled, into a tucked corner of the brick wall at some point along the way, and took a stilling breath as he watch Remus watch him in return.

“You’re really bloody good at that,” Sirius murmured, his voice distant, as his hands flexed unconsciously on the fabric of Remus’ shirt.

“Only because I get fucking fantastic cues from your own mouth,” Remus breathed back, looking down hungrily at Sirius’ lips before he stole another long, languid kiss that left Sirius’ mind reeling with even more clattering noise.

_“Fuck,”_ Sirius choked out when they separated again. His breath tightened inside him and he closed his eyes briefly to keep from whiting out where he stood, swept away in Too Many Good Things at once. “I—you've made your point,” he said with his eyes still shut tight. Sirius felt Remus sniff out a pleased little laugh and draw a thumb down Sirius’ jaw.

“You alright?” Remus hummed, and Sirius nodded quickly as he opened his eyes again to focus on Remus, Remus, _Remus._

“Forgive me if all this sudden not-awful-ness is a bit overwhelming.” Sirius felt his voice tremble slightly, but he bit it back as best he could and leaned fully onto the wall beside him. The cool brick felt nice through his sleeve; he allowed himself the gentle pleasure of worrying an errant lock of Remus’ hair between his fingers. “I’m still…learning how to be a real person.”

“Take your time,” Remus murmured as he caught the hand in his hair and kissed Sirius’ palm while holding smoldering eye contact. Sirius couldn't quite ignore the firestorm of allure that kicked up in his core.

“We should get back in there before one of us ends up a heap of ashes out here,” Sirius said without thinking, his thoughts of divine fire apparently swallowing up even his most basic conventions.

“I would much prefer you solid, yes.” Remus vented a sigh as he stood from his shallow lean on the wall. He brushed faint brick dust from Sirius’ shoulder before his own and combed an automatic hand through a wave of hair, and Sirius remembered to quickly retie his own hair lest he return to the pub looking freshly almost-fucked. A few seconds of muzzy silence descended as the men righted their lapels and evened out their breathing.

“One of these days,” Sirius said, the sound of his voice clear as a bell in the dusk and not unpleasant once he found it again, “I’ll have the wherewithal and the proper guts to let this unfold all the way. And it will be fucking lovely.” Remus’ eyes widened around their edges, just barely, just enough to accidentally telegraph that Sirius has taken him off-guard, so Sirius cleared his throat softly; “If that’s what you end up wanting, one—one of these days.”

“Of course it is, yes,” Remus said immediately, still staring at Sirius for another quick second as if he had just breathed fire. He composed himself again just as quickly though, reassuming the easy grace that Sirius used to dwelling on by now. As he scratched idly at his nose, glanced at his feet once before looking back up with a soft smile, “Like I said. Take your time.”

Sirius would have dived back in for another all-encompassing kiss at that, the warmth of it cutting to his core to heat his bones on this new, foreign hearth of camaraderie, but he didn’t trust himself to not turn to jelly. “Shall we?” he asked simply with a gesture to the door, and it was Remus’ turn to make Sirius’ own surprise jot through his limbs when he stepped up to press a delicate petalled kiss to Sirius’ cheek. The simplicity of it seared like a beautiful, cleansing burn.

“We shall,” Remus whispered—close to his face, warm, secure. Without thinking, Sirius twisted to seal in the last meeting of lips for which his insides had been straining for several long, strangely-paced moments since they last stepped apart. _Fucking powerless to him, Black, watch yourself._ Sirius only let himself pull back from it to push open the door, step into the pub, guide Remus in behind him with a surreptitious, promising little touch to the wrist.

If this became the new normal, everything was going to be a hell of a lot more sensory from hereon out.

Sirius didn’t hate that idea at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back after a long while! I'll be hopefully able to update this piece a bit more regularly now, cheers :>


	6. Verse 6 - Valse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sweetness is heady but sweetness is rare, so Sirius quiets all his rioting demons and chances at doing something nice for himself. For once.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Playlist for "9" is available at https://open.spotify.com/user/spontaneousness/playlist/7M9d9BUDdlIyYw0X9pHYNi

Sensory is as sensory does, and so Sirius let himself adapt full-bodied to what he had started so readily.

He would still wake up from vague shards of nightmares some nights, but not any as detailed and painful as what he used to stomach before stumbling into the nova-like presence of Remus. At worst he’d wake with a cold sweat, the residuals of a shout or the sound of screaming metal ringing at the back wall of his skull, maybe the smell of blood in his nose if it was particularly bad, but it ripped so much more shallowly now. Sirius’ heart, it seemed, was mending.

Emotional scar tissue included, things were lovely. Sirius discovered over several more dates—actual defined, planned, “I-would-like-to-take-you-out-tonight” _dates—_ that Remus was even more lovely than he had seemed in their introductory stumbles through getting acquainted.

On another dinner out on the first truly summery night, a stolen handful of hours away from Remus’ schedule at university as exam season loomed nearer, they both watched with varied degrees of wariness and eagerness as the band on stage bid the pub to come fill the small dance floor in front of them.

“I distinctly remember you saying you can waltz,” Remus sallied, leaning his cheek on his fist and raising an eyebrow.

“Indeed,” Sirius responded tersely, polishing off his pint and mirroring Remus’ sass with his own demure wit. “This isn’t waltz.”

“Well you can keep time, it’s not too fast,” Remus hummed, swirling his Firewhiskey pensively. He looked over at the dance floor before fixing his eyes back to Sirius. “Do you want to? I can lead.”

The band was playing at a good tempo that had a driving rhythm but wasn’t quick enough to exhaust anyone yet, Remus was right. Sirius wouldn’t have stumbled over his own feet, but a vague prickle in the beds of his nails kept him rooted to his spot. “I dunno if I should,” he replied with badly-covered awkwardness. The destructive self-defense of hiding in the liminal background of everything had never worked itself out of his system, stunted especially by the depressive squalor since February that had only just recently started being broken off into steady pieces under Remus’ guidance.

Remus stood from his chair with a look of easy grace, and Sirius secretly clenched his jaw; _Don’t ask me to dance, I won’t be able to say no and I can’t let myself—_

“I won’t push it,” Remus said gently just over the music, extending an open hand, “but I think it would be fun.”

Sirius stared briefly at Remus’ palm and tried to quiet the rioting tension in his core. One look up at those green eyes though, his resistance dissipated like fog. Remus had the most uncanny ability to make the present feel like an alright place to be. Sirius stood in one movement and relished the pleased glimmer in Remus’ responding smile.

“I find myself saying ‘fuck it, why not,’ more often as we spend more time together,” Sirius murmured at Remus’ ear as they started making their short way to the cluster of other pubgoers amid the music, “and I think I’m alright with that.” He bodily ignored the nervous uptick in his pulse.

“Good,” Remus replied simply. They had weaved their place on the floor just inside the edge, comfortably surrounded by other pubgoers spurred to move with the music but not nearly suffocated in the crowd. Remus' idea of leading was comfortable, a hand on Sirius' waist that more security than actual guidance. He felt the music like it always looked like he did on stage, a sort of sway seated in his joints that somehow didn't come off as goofy, just a subtle sort of natural talent for transmitting rhythm. Sirius mirrored it as best he could, followed suit in the cluster of other anonymous people. It was the opposite of what he had feared it would feel like—amidst so many strangers, the preoccupation of standing out seemed silly. He would never see these people again in his life, so he might as well enjoy a tune or three across from a gorgeous and captivating professor who, somehow, thought Sirius was also gorgeous and captivating. Adrift with the flow of the music, they danced. 

The date that night ended just as the ones before and the ones to follow it did; kissing, madly, with notes of desperate want, pressed against a wall or a doorjamb or some other alcove. Remus’ hands reigning themselves just shy of reaching into Sirius' shirt, Sirius' resolve threatening to leap from the heights of his sanity and crash to the ground in a heap of dangerous inhibition, their mouths opening over one another again and again to trade the sweetness of frantic breath, tracing shoulders and necks and jaws and earlobes with teeth and tongues; always in privacy but always running a certain risk of accidental passers-by due to the simple fact they were In Public. Sirius liked it better this way for the most part—no risk of his nerves clattering too far out of order if there was no sane, safe way for he and Remus to dissolve into that hallowed step beyond this ardor. As much as his more primal edges clamored for it, waking him each morning with clockwork frequency with the ache for release straining in him after colorful and abstract dreams of Remus' litheness beneath him, Sirius still could not trust himself. 

James and Pete and Marlene were the three who would hound him most heartily about his new vigor, making jokes along their respective scales of Bawdy—Lily was too kind to even comment, Pete was the tamest, Marlene was absolutely filthy—when they would notice Sirius laugh a bit more often or walk in with a certain brightness in his eyes. 

"We're _not fucking,"_ he said for what felt like the hundredth time with exasperation one day to Marlene. They were outside of a café at the center of town along the water, and his voice was apparently a bit too loud for the scowl a youngish mother shot his way with glaring accuracy as her little girl stared at him with naïve curiosity. In a softer, more sheepish tone, turning his back to the table he just offended, "I don't trust myself not to sodding unwind from shock if we come to that."

Sirius tucked into a croissant with wolfish intent as Marlene rolled her eyes from over her latte. "Well clearly he fancies you, you've seen more of each other in the past month than I've seen of you in the past three."

"Depressive episodes don't count," Sirius insisted with his mouth full.

"Mummy, what's 'fucking'?" a little voice from two tables over asked, and Sirius winced while Marlene barely stifled a cackle as the child's mother scrambled to change the subject. 

"Yes they do count, because this bloke dragged you out of one." Marlene replied once she recovered, her eyes bright with residual humor as she sipped again from her drink. Her wine-colored lipstick had stained the edge of the mug with a dark half-moon lip print. "And now for some reason you don't want to shag him."

“It’s—“ Sirius scowled and loosed a gust of a sigh. "It's not as easy as just _wanting_ to, of course I _want_ to. I've been...wanking regularly, Merlin, Marlene, do we have to have this conversation right now?" Sirius' voice dipped into a mutter as his sentence spun on, feeling the threat of the mother's eyes practically boring into him angrily from over his shoulder. 

"You're the one who got defensive," Marlene said with a shrug. Sirius gave her a deadpan look that could have withered daisies, which made it lucky that Marlene was more akin to a bouquet of witch-hazels instead.

"Look," Sirius continued in a low voice, "we end up snogging at the end of every date like the bloody world is ending. I would invite him back home if I was more confident I wouldn't end up in an anxious, shitty puddle on the floor. We're always out in public, it's easier to just...write it off that way, I guess."

"Invite him over for drinks at your flat," Marlene said, as if it was the most obvious plan of action in the world. 

_"Come up to my flat for a drink,_ sure, that doesn't smack of a queer proposition from the 19-fucking-40s at _all,"_ Sirius snorted. 

"Well, if you want to be all House-of-Black and suave about it, you ponce, then have him over for dinner. But make sure it's at your flat. No more excuses that way."

“But—" Sirius tried to come up with a rebuttal, but Marlene was infuriatingly correct. The smirk she wore confirmed that much. Sirius ripped at the remaining edge of his breakfast as if he were preparing to feed the birds hopping about on the ground. "What if he hates my flat?" he mumbled. 

"If he hates your flat he'll be a gentleman about it and distract himself with your cock instead, I'm sure," Marlene replied flippantly, and Sirius felt his face flush. "Honestly, Sirius, you're being ridiculous. Let him fall for you, he clearly wants to."

"You haven't even met him," Sirius said, his voice carrying an accidental note of apprehension. Marlene raised her eyebrows with plain judgement and replaced her sunglasses as the sun reappeared from behind a convenient cloud. 

"I don't need to meet him to be able to tell how smitten you twats are liable to be. Divination, remember?"

Marlene laughed again, throaty and carrying as always, as Sirius pelted her with a handful of pastry crumbs to the delight of the sparrows at their feet. 

—

**request**

_Answer, probably._

**busy on friday?**

_Absolutely, as long as I finish writing this term's exam before then  
_ _If you invite me out for something, it will be good motivation to get it done!_

**hahaha how about dinner?**

_Yessssss  
_ _There's a new Chinese place across from campus that's supposed to be more than alright?_

**i was actually thinking you could come over to mine  
** **put my kitchen to use, etc etc**

**sound good?**

 

**if you'd rather go out that's alright too**

 

**orrrrr we could pick a different day it's your call**

_Shit sorry my mum called  
_ _YES  
_ _SURE!_  
_ah sorry double capitals there_  
_Dinner at yours sounds lovely!  
_ _Friday is still perfect, at what time?_

**come over around 6:00, we can have drinks while the food cooks, eat round 8:00?  
** **i'll send you my address**

_Sounds good to me :)  
_ _I'll bring wine?_

**sure  
** **red, if a roast is alright with you**

_Literally anything edible would be fantastic._  
_Full disclosure: I've a terribly unrefined palette  
_ _You could serve me shitty pasta and my nonexistent frame of reference would still think it was restaurant quality._

 **** **ooh don't tell me these things  
**** i'll make kettle noodles and tell you it's an ancient family recipe  
** made with dragon blood and my grandmother's ashes  
same thing, really

_LOL  
_ _A roast will be lovely, I'm excited!_

_Please don't put your grandmother's ashes in it though_

 

**sorry i can't hear you over the sound of opening this urn**

_SIRIUS_  
_I CAN'T TELL IF YOU'RE JOKING_  
_DON'T BE SMARMY OVER TEXT  
_ _IT DOESN'T WORK LIKE THAT_

**don't worryyyy  
** **it's just a pinch**

_Oh sod off that's DISGUSTING_  
_Hahahaha_  
_Right, I have an exam to build now if you're to even have the chance to pepper me with granny flakes  
_ _Quick, tell me within a foot of parchment the social differences between the Vampiric Ward of 1304 and the Bloodletter Act of 1942_

**one is in Ye Olde English Fcript and the other is fucking racist  
** **also please never utter the phrase granny flakes anywhere near me ever**

_Cheers, you already know more than half my students!! -__-_

_P.S.  
_ _Granny flakes_

**thanks! i hate it  
** **lol see you on friday you ponce**

_;)  
_ _Night, Sirius_

**ta you x**

—

Friday arrived too quickly, and Sirius' nerves felt sheared to their core.

He had waffled for ten minutes about whether or not to wear a nicer shirt before he settled on comfort. He went with a clean pair from his stupefying number of black jeans and a well-loved but not-hideous thermal top that he thought did a good job of saying "Welcome To My Flat" without also accidentally saying "I'm Trying To Seduce You, Dr. Lupin." 

Because he _wasn't._

_This was dinner._

With the bloke he like to go out with, and snog silly.

Dinner at his flat. Alone in his flat.

At night.

...In his flat. 

Sirius was decidedly against the idea of lighting candles.

The wine glasses were dusty with disuse when Sirius rooted them out of the cabinet, and he charmed them clean smoothly with the wand he was now keeping regularly in his pocket or tucked into his sleeve. The weight of it against his leg or his forearm had taken a few days to get used to, but it was back now to being something almost like normal again. Sirius set two glasses on the table, checked his watch with muted anxiousness, set the first record on top of the pile beside the turn table without looking at it out of rote distraction, and flopped himself onto the armchair to wait for twenty minutes. Idly, he worked on a braid that slung over his shoulder—cleared away the curtains of hair to give him one less place to hide when he inevitably felt like receding into himself at some point. He was consistently and genuinely quelled to peace by Remus, but Sirius still didn't have enough confidence in his mental bedrock to stay genial amid all the What-Ifs cropping up around the purpose of the evening. 

Sirius was getting ready to debate the merits of perhaps claiming a last-minute stomach bug when there was a crisp double knock on his front door. Veins drummed up to a frantic buzz, heart hammering at its cage of his ribs, stomach twisting suddenly in knots at once pleasantly pitched and a queasy reminder of his bloody fucking _nerves—_

Sirius opened the door with a put-on smile that immediately became the real thing when he saw Remus standing with a bottle of wine tucked into his forearm. Still in work clothes—the neat lines of his linen shirt crisp beneath a tweed sport coat, pressed trousers of dark and subdued denim, smart shoes that looked like they'd been shined carefully earlier in the week. Sirius took an extra second to selfishly absorb the lovely sight of him before stepping back to open the door a bit wider. "Evening!" He finally said, the handful of seconds feeling too long but all too good.

"Hallo hallo," Remus replied with a lilt, seeming happy as he stepped into the flat while Sirius shut the door behind them. "Here's for you, thanks again for having me over!“

Sirius accepted the bottle and sniffed a little laugh at the half-naked Veela snaking herself through the letters on the label with a sultry pout; _Envy._

"I know, it looks bloody ridiculous but it tastes like a dream. The right kind of dry, not too complex," Remus explained. He shrugged off his jacket as he spoke, and Sirius reached out to help take it before Remus held up a gentle, thank-you hand and draped it simply over the back of the sofa beside him. Looking around the flat, Remus smiled. "This is a really nice flat, I didn’t know this building was residential.”

"Thanks, I had absolutely no hand in it besides the things you can sit on." With a last-minute gesture, still juggling the wine, "And I also charmed the walls the slightest shade of ochre last week out of boredom.”

“Your boredom has good taste,” Remus teased, and Sirius couldn’t help the smile that jumped onto his face as he set the bottle down on the dining table.

“It’s fairly compact, but here, I’ll show you around.” Sirius ambled though the cozy expanse of the flat with Remus close behind him, pointing out each major bit as they passed through—living room, storage closet, kitchen, dining space, bathroom, bedroom (skirted quickly, not opened beyond a cursory gap in the door even though the room was immaculate for the press of possibility), and the second bedroom studio outside of which Remus was looking eager to see more.

“Would you mind?” He asked carefully, his eyes flickering along the skeleton of the easel’s back they could see from the open door where they stood. Sirius’ bones rioted with a pang of embarrassed panic for a half-second in resistance before he quieted them with a defiant nod.

“Keep in mind, everything in here is still warm-ups. Still—still getting back to where I was before I stopped in the winter.” Sirius felt his explanation deflate as Remus entered the room just ahead of him, green eyes bright with eager wonder. As Remus rounded on the easel, looking at it like it was hanging on a gallery wall, Sirius clenched his jaw and fussed with the hem of his shirt. “It’s lots of exercises, nothing so permanent. Not really worth keeping, any of it really. They’re just there.”

Remus didn't seem to be listening very closely to the limp excuses. He was looking at the sheets of charcoal paper with an open expression, eyes alight with something fresh and delicate that Sirius couldn't construe in the lowering daylight through the window, and when he looked up at Sirius after several quiet moments the eagerness in his smile was like a lance to the lungs. 

"These are fantastic," Remus said simply, genuinely. Sirius stepped over to stand beside him--shoulders not touching, space between them wide enough to breathe but Sirius could feel him there, periphery, warm, present, _in his flat—_ "They're really wonderful, all of these."

When Sirius blinked himself back into attention at the indication, Remus was pointing at the sheet Sirius had started the other morning. Iterations of ravens and feathers, the motif stuck in his mind like a spur since he first unlocked the studio door and saw the half-finished tattoo for Regulus, stood out lively and well-lined against the paper. 

"Thanks," Sirius said as he tried not to mentally catalogue every error glaring up from the drawings. "Corvids have always been sort of—a thing, for me. My brother was getting a trio of them tattooed, I was designing them all." It shocked him, suddenly, distantly, quietly in the deep tissue of his heart, that applying the past tense to Reg wasn't flaying him. It felt almost…natural?

"That's so cool, I can see that in the style. This one is my favorite," Remus said gently, stepping one foot closer to the easel and peering intently at the shape Sirius had twisted up on the left edge of the page. A black wing, darkling with the sheen of layered charcoal and pen, swept up in a stretch of anatomical precision to show unfurled feathers readied for flight. Sirius had daydreamed about that same one being inked into his own skin as he drew it with automatic inspiration, imagining the design starting at the base of his spine where only one dimple on his lower back showed against his musculature—an imperfection, he used to hate it when he had room to be preoccupied with things that weren't important—and curving up to end the tip of the wingspan just shy of his heart. It would be massive. Only a single tattoo of the north star on his right hip bone, a personal gift to himself when he survived a disastrous breakup soon after finishing at school, had conditioned him to the tingling strangeness of being tattooed before, so regardless of what he thought of it he still feared the broad swath of the idea in millions of needle pricks.

Regardless, seeing Remus scrutinize it now with that sort of wonder in his eyes somehow felt like the man was staring at Sirius' bare torso. Sirius' cheeks began to flush before he turned back to the doorway, intent on changing the subject. 

"What say you to commencing the wine?" Sirius asked a bit too loudly, relieved when he heard after a beat Remus' padding footsteps creaking subtly along the wood floor behind him. 

"I say aye and absolutely," Remus sang, and Sirius felt himself unable to hold back a pleased chuckle. 

They finished the bottle as the food cooked, drinking while the conversation stuttered like a starting propellor into the steady hum of comfort Sirius enjoyed so much. He had made sure to seat himself with enough space between them that he didn't feel like one, constantly reaching out to touch Remus as he spoke, or two, leaping out the window for the virility of his nerves. He quieted the noisy static in him with each sip and watched closely the way Remus' smile curved around his stories and questions.

Once the oven chimed and the roast and potatoes were finished, Sirius opened another red from the long-forgotten cabinet of bottles at the base of the television set. Pleasantly buzzed, Sirius uncorked the fresh draught and poured deep for both of them. 

"This smells fucking majestic," Remus said starkly, looking impressed at their two plates on the table. "Cook often?"

"Before I decided to leave the land of the living for a couple of months there, yeah," Sirius replied as he pulled out Remus' chair for him before moving to his own seat. "I was always really close with my mother's house elves when I was a kid, since it used to rankle her so badly. I picked up a lot from them."

"True London breeding—ahh, I heard it in your accent too, I could tell you were posh from the get-go," Remus teased with good nature, the fork paused just ahead of his mouth at Sirius' inquisitive raised eyebrow. 

"Surprised you didn't write me off immediately then."

"Are you kidding? I have a penchant for high cheekbones and biting wit, you should have picked up on that by now."

Sirius felt his pulse shudder pleasantly at the quip, almost fired back his own volley of tart flirtation before being stunned briefly—a holy, mellifluous sound of distilled pleasure had just leapt out of Remus and straight down to Sirius' pelvis. It took an extra half-second for Sirius to realize Remus had only bitten into the first slice of roast beef and not unexpectedly climaxed.

"That good?" Sirius managed to say without too much evident strangulation on his words. 

_"Yes,_ fucking delicious," Remus replied, already cutting another piece and oblivious to the entendre of his tone. Sirius took several surreptitious stilling breaths before tucking into his own plate. 

They ate steadily as they might have in a restaurant, the conversation still lovely. Sirius noticed with a secretive smile to himself that Remus had faultless table manners. They only bumped feet twice under the table, and only, Sirius assumed, halfway by accident. 

"Do you want more?" Sirius asked readily when he noticed Remus had finished, but he was stopped partway into his stand to fetch another serving by Remus waving a hand. 

"I'm set, thanks, but again," Remus said with a bright smile. “Fucking delicious."

Sirius' eyes immediately landed on the wine bottle between them, still just half empty, as his insides clawed for purchase on a reason to keep Remus near and talking. "I don't much feel like re-corking that," he said plainly, and Remus threw his head back slightly to laugh. It bared his throat like noontime light. Sirius forced himself not to stare.

"Sofa?" Remus asked with a carefree buoyancy in his words, pushing up out of his chair to cover the short distance to the couch beside the coffee table. He flopped onto it gracefully as Sirius followed, bringing the bottle along without glasses. 

"Sofa," Sirius sighed, sitting down as well—closer than he's dared all evening, his uppity carefulness waning, predictably so—and taking a shallow swig straight from the neck of the wine. He passed it to Remus with a knowing grin, and they set to finishing the vintage as they refused to give up their precious stream of Growing Closer through words and gestures. 

"How'd you get ahold of this place? It's such a beautiful flat," Remus eventually marveled not for the first time, sprawled with his knees hooked over the opposite arm of the couch and the top of his head only inches from the outside of Sirius' right thigh. He was peering up at Sirius from upside down, and when Sirius looked down at the open curiosity of that staggeringly handsome face he had to summon an extra second of startup from his misfiring synapses. 

"An advert in the Prophet three years ago," Sirius explained, swilling again from the wine. "I came into a cracking lot of money from my dead eccentric uncle, and I needed something to do with it."

"So you bought a flat?"

"Rented. Ish. I pay yearly lumps to my landlady, but she lives in America and I don't think she quite cares about the property value. One of many just like it, I'm sure. Rate hasn't been raised at all since I moved in."

"And you're between work, right?" Remus shifted to sit up and pin Sirius with a benign but inquisitive look. His hair was sticking up in the back, _as if it had been mussed from laying down and being sucked—_ Sirius cleared the thought immediately with sharp clench of his jaw and nodded. Remus narrowed his eyes slightly, his focus zeroing in pleasantly. "How much money did that eccentric uncle have to pass down? If—you don't mind me asking."

Sirius took a long pull on the wine before passing it over to Remus. Sirius waited until Remus finished swallowing his own deep mouthful before sighing. "Eight million galleons," he said lightly. 

_"What?"_

"Eiiiiight million galleons," Sirius repeated through a groan as he stretched, patently avoiding looking at Remus. He could feel his heart in his throat, threatening to choke him. He rarely passed this bastion of judgement with anyone, and helped along by his happiness and the slight buzz of drink and the presence and smell and fucking _wonder_ of Remus beside him, it all just came out. _Shit._

"I know, that's what you said. Sirius, you could live _anywhere,_ why here?"

"Well why do _you_ live here, why does anyone live here?" Sirius replied, his hearing ringing ever so slightly around its edges as he turned to face Remus full-on. "I like the feeling of this town, I like the rhythm and the light and the people, and I especially like that you can only remember London is to the west if you really, _really_ squint. It's far away from everything I hated as a boy, but it still feels...familiar."

"But you—you could buy a house in Monaco, or somewhere else lovely and, and coastal, private beach and everything!" Remus marveled. Sirius felt his eyes tighten at their corners. 

"Afraid of the ocean, don't like summer weather," he said shortly. Remus snorted with pleasant snark and laid back down, but this time with his head balanced on Sirius' leg. Neither of them remarked on the change, and neither of them moved. Sirius felt strangely tense. 

"Everyone has their reasons for everything, no matter how silly yours might be for wanting to stay here. Quiet little university town," Remus sighed. Without thinking, Sirius chuckled dryly to himself and set a gentle hand to Remus' hair. He twisted the strands idly through his fingers, staring out the darkened window visible through the open door to his bedroom. Regardless of the current emotional spillage, he wasn't quite ready to let fly that he couldn't bring himself to leave the last place he'd spoken to Regulus. 

"I suppose I've come off as a tosser now," he hummed, not without a hint of bitterness.

"Why would you think that?" Remus asked, shifting his shoulders slightly on the cushions. Sirius shrugged without looking down at him and kept wending his fingers steadily through the gold-shot hair beneath them. 

"Hiding the fact of a ridiculous trove of money from you after seeing you for a month feels sort of like lying," he said lightly. Remus's hand caught his wrist gently, stilling the nervous ministrations on his hair, and they met gazes in what felt like negotiation. 

"Lying would have been dancing around it if I asked you 'Sirius Black, are you sitting on a ridiculous trove on money?' I understand keeping it back, wasn't something I would have shared readily if it were me." Remus quirked a smile to himself that fed the embers in Sirius' insides like dry kindling. "Honestly, I would have felt a bit nefarious letting myself fall for you if I'd known about it from the outset."

"Fall for me?" Sirius asked instinctively, immediately, ignoring the sweetness in the rest of Remus' explanation, his voice feeling slightly choked and airy as it filled the space between them. Remus' small smile eddied out a bit further to its edges with good humor, although his cheeks went slightly pink. 

"What else do you think I've been doing since we met?" He murmured. 

“I—just playing music and giving lectures, I assumed," Sirius stammered, his humor weak and arid and only half-joking. Time felt fairly frozen around them, as if the only movement left on the earth was the measure of their individual breathing and the crackling closeness of their touch where they currently sprawled. Remus sat himself up slowly and faced him. 

"Playing music and giving lectures," Remus said softly, "and then going home each day since the end of February to try and stop thinking about you. And failing miserably." He shifted to lean nearer, propped his cheek on his hand with a lazy smile, a relaxed languor of limbs that drew Sirius' affection like knifepoint. "Hoping maybe you were doing the same."

Sirius swallowed around a bulk of nerves, humming in the hollows of his throat like a growing storm. "I'd have to be mad not to," he managed to cobble out. "You're fucking magnificent." The truth, spoken aloud for the first time, made his vocal cords ache with a combination of terror and yearning. 

"Takes one to know one," Remus replied, still sitting like an observer to something unfolding pleasantly before him. Sirius reached up and smoothed a piece of hair back off Remus' forehead. He left his hand perched tentatively at the base of Remus' neck. 

"I would quite like to kiss you," Sirius whispered, the words slightly ragged as he dredged up their exchange from the night after the gallery, the first brick in a short but winding path of his affection for this fantastic man in front of him. Wordlessly, Remus leaned forward with enthusiasm to seal the evening. Their lips met like gentle opposing currents kissing on evening-cooled sand. 

Remus always kissed like he was steering a ship, steadily and sure of each minute shift in the wind of ardor and the waves of insistence at their sides. Sirius was helpless to it, billowed aloft in it like a dream, suspended in sense-filled absence of time in a space where the only thing that existed or mattered was Remus. Surround with the heat of feeling well, he surrendered.

They had dissolved after several minutes into a horizontal tangle on the couch, their hands everywhere and their breath warm and their skin stained fairly glowing with the blush of expectation. Sirius pulled back from an indolent dive into Remus’ most recent twist of lips and gentle teeth, his breathing more than a bit labored as he took in the mussed and worked-up sight of Remus before him. 

"Bed?" Sirius asked, just barely, almost unable to hear himself above the roar of his singing, thrilling pulse in his ears. Remus' eyes flashed with approval. 

"Of course," his words hardly finished with their flight from his tongue before he pulled Sirius close to gift him the lingering kiss that ended with Remus standing up from the couch. Sirius stood as well, almost kicked over the empty wine bottle, beelined for the bedroom and couldn't quite stop the breathless sound of encouragement that leapt past his teeth when Remus caught up and rounded on him, pressed them both back against the open door for another series of tangled kisses that were now more than sure to dissolve into filthy ecstasy. 

Sirius' hands found purchase on Remus’ hips and he took an experimental step forward, a step toward the carefully-made bed, the short distance slightly stumbled until the backs of Remus' knees bumped against the bed frame and he eased into a sit. Remus pulled Sirius with him as he leaned back, Sirius curling into a possessive lean overtop of the prone and willing stretch with one leg still standing and the other bent at the knee that supported him on the mattress. 

Sirius pulled back again with particular difficulty of will and flexed his right hand where it was gripped Remus' side, his left cradling the nape of Remus' neck. "I want you in my mouth," he panted, the words feeling dry, the request feeling strained until he saw Remus flare his nostrils unconsciously and nod with fevered encouragement. Sirius edged off the bed, taking to his knees gently as he slid his attention to Remus' trousers. His mind, normally racing, was a wash of white noise—blessedly blank, free of the inner voice that might have told him to _Stop, this is ridiculous, he doesn't actually care about you, you give terrible head anyways—_ so Sirius embraced the temporary absence of his self-hate as he worked fervently at the belt and button and zipper in front of him. 

Remus' hand was knotted through Sirius' hair when his trousers and pants were shed, and he tugged at the root with a feathery spasm when Sirius touched him. Sirius wet his lips as he stroked once with an eager flex of his palm, slowly, feeling the length from base to tip. Remus was nicely sized, only just longer than Sirius, shaped with an attractive curve and warm with silken body heat. 

"Very nice," Sirius murmured low in his throat, taking the liberty of another slow stroke that made Remus bite his lip with a sharp inhale. Just as Remus was about to reply, the green of his eyes stirring with arousal and wit, Sirius lowered his mouth around his cock without warning and enjoyed the guttered, affirmative sound of arrested stability that tripped out of Remus’ lungs. 

Sirius was acutely aware that it had been a very long time since he'd done this, so he closed his eyes and did his best to focus on replicating the memories of what he knew he liked the feeling of on himself. Remus made small, tight, periodic sounds of approval, peppered along with a nearly unbearable lightness of _"Fuck"_ s and the reverent thrum of Sirius' name. Warmth bloomed in the well of Sirius' belly as he went, suffusing the ends of his nerves with starbursts, and after a bit of acclimating himself to having somebody else in his mouth, he reached down with his free hand to undo his own trousers and start bringing himself along as well. The first touch coaxed a lightened groan out if him for the sensation of it all, which caused Remus to sharply cant his hips up and cry out at the vibration. Sirius growled at the back of his throat, enjoying the feeling of struggling for mental hold on the sheer face of this steeply-mounting arousal, and Remus’ breath rushed out on another broken plea at that.

“Come—here, come up to me,” Remus finally begged, pulsing in Sirius’ grip and beading slightly salted against the flat of Sirius’ tongue. Sirius hummed an inquisitive, and when Remus gasped around his breath for the umpteenth time they met eyes across the flat, sweat-pricked plane of Remus’ torso. The slicing emotional accuracy of the look stabbed Sirius through the gaps between each of his ribs, and he absolutely loved it. “Get up here, lie with me,” Remus repeated between his shorn breaths.

Sirius took his mouth off as his anxiety rose with a brief wave at the thought of leaving the relative safety down on his knees before Remus—not many things to fuck up if he was just sucking him off, but there loomed a whole fresh host of ways he could ruin the evening if they were to truly and really—

“Sirius,” Remus murmured, dragging Sirius back through the surface of reality. He was propped up on his elbows, still hard and half-unclothed but watching Sirius carefully. Sirius could see the heartbeat fluttering in his neck, the weight of concern lacing the heavy doses of adrenal thrill in his irises. “Do you want to—“

“I want to do whatever _you_ want,” Sirius interrupted swiftly, moving with immediacy to step out of his tangled trousers and shed his shirt in one motion. He could quiet this unease with good things, good things he desperately wanted and quite honestly _needed_ to feel in this moment, with this man, in this way and in this rhythm. When he was naked—his ramparts torn down, inner guard towers emptied—he looked down to Remus lain out before him to feel a pulse of depthless affection as Remus bit his lip unconsciously.

“I want you to come too _,”_ Remus said softly, and Sirius eased himself down to the mattress. He was still tense but he quieted the dull roar of ridiculous unease by catching Remus in another kiss.

After another fistful of endless seconds, Sirius let out his breath in a tenuous stream when he felt Remus move down his chest in slow, ambling patterns with one hand, the other warm and secure on the dip of Sirius' lower back. 

"You have a gorgeous body," Remus murmured, kissing softly with barely-tame fervor along the pale trace of Sirius' collarbone. 

“Likewise— _oh,"_ Sirius' gasp devouring his words like his thoughts as his eyes flew shut, sensation rioting up through his blood when Remus' hand took purchase on Sirius' cock. His fingers were flawless, welcome pressure on the delicate skin that hadn't felt anything besides Sirius' perfunctory touch for month. To have the strokes there now called indolent, lovely, almost meditative in the way they moved from base to tip and back again, again, drawing Sirius' close to press their lips together once more, was more than he might have let himself dream in the thick of his worst emotional troughs. Sirius was only halfway aware of his own grip, clumsy and almost completely stilled on Remus. 

"Can I bring us along together?" Remus murmured. Sirius opened his eyes and took in the smoldering honesty of those green, green eyes, like a spell, a Killing Curse, a murderous strike on Sirius' inability to let himself be _free_ again. The unfurling of possibility in his chest was as a second wind, prickling through his lungs and straining his ribcage with something that trembled for triumph.

"Yes, bloody fucking please, _yes,"_ Sirius rambled on a paradise-weakened voice. He nearly tore through the bed sheet balled up in his free hand when Remus' length moved to stand flush against his own, closed in the heated strength of Remus' hand and slicked with the precursor to their final ardor. They shared the desperate air of ragged breaths—messy, sudden, uncaring, unfettered. It was fucking perfection. Their hips found the stuttering rhythm of It's Been A While, rutting together in slightly uneven arcs of seeking one another. It wasn't long until Sirius felt his muscles twist and tense up with the threat of a hard climax, one hand flying up to bury itself in Remus' hair and hold for dear life. 

"Remus, I—fucking, I’m—“

"Do it," Remus bid him, hoarse, his breath like dragon fire, his words like opium to Sirius’ thought processes. “Come, Sirius.”

The show of command, the impossible heat in his veins, the utter sensation of existing; at Remus’ behest, everything winnowed immediately into a confluence of euphoria. Sirius came with an intense full-bodied release that marked with each luxurious pulse Remus’ chest, his own stomach, and a bit of the bedsheets. It was too much—he was lifted so far out of his own mind for several moments by the blinding pleasure that he only returned to solid reality in enough time to hear Remus choke out his name and spill his own finality fully into the space between them. Sirius watched his expression as he rode it out, rapt, with hungry and refractory eyes to see the way the hallowed twist of ecstasy sat on Remus’ face. It was perfect.

Satiated, Sirius let his eyes fall shut again as he drew deep, steadying breaths that filled his lungs from bottom to top and out again, a constant cycle of returning to himself that he could feel with each slowing beat of his heart. 

"Accio wand," he heard Remus' murmur just as spent, followed by the soft shift of fabric from the entryway through the open door before a tiny whip of air whizzed toward the bed and ended in a solid thunk of wood against palm. Remus cast a couple cleansing charms over the both of them as well as the sheets in small waves that felt like cool air, and then let his wand roll to rest on the floor as he turned toward Sirius. Feeling the closeness of the attention, Sirius opened his eyes. Remus chuckled. Sirius felt it was the most unexpectedly lovely sound he had ever heard in his life. 

"What," Sirius said lightly, teasing, reaching over to rest a hand on Remus' waist. They were both stretched out on their sides, naked and plain and supremely satisfied, facing one another as their faculties returned to their limbs.

"Nothing," Remus hummed. He was still smiling to himself as he twisted a lock of Sirius' unbound hair around his finger. "Would it be horribly slaggish of me to say I'd been looking forward to that for a couple of weeks?"

Sirius snorted and stroked a thumb over a pale little scar he had just noticed on Remus' right hip. "If that's the case, then we're both guilty." Sirius carefully neglected to detail the fact that every bit of fantasizing he turned to lately had managed to twist itself without fail into ending with the image of Remus somehow—below him, inside him, above him, every which-way. He would have been frustrated with the way his mind constantly returned if it weren't so bloody electrifying each time. 

"You're really wonderful," Remus said softly. "And I'm not just—high on sex, or drunk or anything. You're absolutely lovely."

"Look who's talking," Sirius replied. He wasn't sure the depth in his voice was going to carry over, so he reached up to touch ever so gently at the planes of Remus' face. He drank in the stillness of the air between them, blessed and gentle as a morning sigh, and knew immediately that his instincts had been right all along--they needed one another, in more ways than just this. 

"I realize I just revealed a landfill of extraneous shit about the money and all that, and it might seem cheap to ask you right now," Sirius said carefully, his eyes not landing directly on Remus' but still taking in all his edges, "but do you want to—do this whole thing right? Proper, I mean…we could actually date, you could—if you want to be my boyfriend." His voice fizzled out at the end like a wet match. The silence between them that only lasted a couple seconds felt like an eternity to Sirius' renewing anxiety. 

"Extraneous shit or not," Remus finally said with the trappings of a smile in his words as Sirius fastidiously stared at his throat instead of making eye contact, "and although it will take some getting used to the term, Iiiiii would love to."

When Sirius looked up with a shock of perfect contentment through his insides, his breath caught tight like the first few milliseconds of laughter when it gets trapped just behind the vocal cords before letting loose with a thrill, Remus was still smiling at him—into him, down to his very bones. It felt like the sweetest sort of arrival. 


	7. Verse 7 - Chorus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Friends are a welcome distraction as the thornier notions might not be worth the effort to parse through just yet. Are they?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Playlist for "9" is available at https://open.spotify.com/user/spontaneousness/playlist/7M9d9BUDdlIyYw0X9pHYNi

Affection.

Giving and receiving affection was patching over the deepest wounds in Sirius’ core. It was the strangest concept, because it felt so natural that he forgot to hate himself most days.

It wasn’t but another month of such seemingly endless contentment before Lily finally snapped.

“I have to meet him,” she blurted, freckle-dusted cheeks pinked with eagerness, speaking over the Thursday evening music at the wizarding pub down the street from her and James’ flat. “Anyone who keeps you from moping for almost three months is a saint and ahalf, and I _have to meet him.”_

Sirius laughed, bright and long. “I don’t suppose I’m allowed to say no to that?”

“No more excuses!” Lily cried as she gestured with her empty pint glass. “The term is over, we’ll do dinner!”

“He does summer studies—“

“We’ll figure something out.” Lily leaned across the table and pointed an exacting finger at Sirius, her engagement ring winking menacingly, as Sirius rose his hands in surrender.

“I’ll see when he’s free next,” he conceded with an unconscious smile. Riling Lily was a favorite pastime of his, proverbial younger sister with all the silly trappings of familial tenderness he never got through his bloodline originally. Sirius was better at it than James, probably all the better for the approaching marriage.

All wrapped up in a little affection.

The following evening, twisted in Sirius' sheets and drawing heavy stilling breaths of completion, he and Remus stared up at the ceiling in the thinned-out evening light. 

"My best mates want to meet you," Sirius panted as he let his eyelids flutter shut briefly for a lovely pulse of ebbing spasm in is core. 

"Cheers, when?" Remus' voice was gauzy, well-natured and beautiful to Sirius' ears to put a smile to his lips as he listened. _Watch yourself, Black, if your face keeps up like this it'll stick at the stroke of midnight._

"Whenever works for you," Sirius replied as he rolled onto his side to face Remus. He was equally prone, the goldish undertone of his skin a dream beneath the freckles on his shoulders and the inviting, marmoreal curvature of the natural bundles of muscle that made up his body. Remus was surprisingly built beneath his clothes, a foil to the more slender and paler lengths of sinew in Sirius' limbs. Neither of them were anything near godly, but it was particularly thrilling to touch Remus and feel the invisible hum of warm, bunched-up power within him. Remus had mentioned before that he enjoyed running. It tended to show in the stronger shapes of his abdominals, where Sirius was now tracing an idle pattern on the faint belt of iliac muscle there. "I'm on your program, 'm not the one with summer sessions."

"Thank fuck for that," Remus said through a long stretch, smirking as he yawned when Sirius blatantly let his eyes rake across the marvel of his motion. Remus knew exactly what he was doing, _the fantastic prat._ Settled again, he kissed Sirius gently between the eyes and put his own hand to the rise and fall of Sirius' ribs, his thumb stroking like rambling thought. "Saturday?"

"Any hour?"

"Preferably around dinner, so we can take each other home afterwards." Remus' murmur was backlit by a well-placed and exceedingly well-aimed bolt of mischief in his eyes. It struck Sirius just behind his diaphragm and made his resolve twitch violently. 

"Fucking hell, Lupin," Sirius muttered, sliding his hand forward to rest palm flat against the curve of Remus' lower back. Sirius tugged gently, pulling them nearer, huffing a dry little laugh into the bend of Remus' neck. "We _just_ finished."

"You say that as if it's something that matters," Remus hummed, winding his other hand into a bundle of Sirius' hair and tipping his face up to kiss him fully. Sirius relaxed into the hold and responded with waking eagerness. 

"You're liable to turn me to dust," Sirius groaned when they separated, his words dissolving into a pouty chuckle as Remus ducked his head to kiss along Sirius' collarbone. 

"Don't do _that,”_ Remus replied with plain, feigned shock, his right hand moving south, blessedly south. His eyes were alight with mirth and the trappings of all sorts of control. His voice dropped to a sudden sotto, breath warm on the shell of Sirius' ear. "I like your company too much for you to disappear on me."

Sirius thought then for the first time in a long time, deep in a back corner of his brain as he and Remus twined back together with steady resurgence, he might well be falling past plain Affection and headlong instead into Love. 

It was stupid and fast and he would be sure to keep the smoldering little secret close, but it was far from the worst thing he'd ever let happen to himself.

—

**oi  
** **saturday?**

_what for_

**_Do we finally get to meet him!!!_ **

**yeah for dinner  
** **are you both free?**

_fucking finally  
_ _how'd that come up  
_ _"thanks for the fucking by the way wanna meet my mates"_

**_James stop omg_ **

 

**...**

_wait.  
Sirius  
  
_ _Sirius are you fucking kidding me_

**the truth hurts, doesn't it**

_siwhdgwhsuwi I was JOKING  
_ _YOU FUCKING SLAG  
_ _oh man I'm dying  
_ _stop making me laugh in the lab  
_ _it disturbs all the brews  
_ _holy shit this is ridiculous_

**you're the one tickled by my PERFECTLY NORMAL tendencies  
** **you fucking poof**

**_Stop it, you two!! I can't work when my mobile keeps buzzing!!!  
_ ** **_Sirius saturday is great, bring him to ours round 7:00 for dinner_ **

**cheers**

_"thanks for the fucking"  
_ _i'm proud of that one  
_ _might have to use that  
_ _hey Lily  
_ _care for a fucking_

**_Don't you DARE.  
  
_ ** **that's my cue to leave you idiots then  
** **saturday at 7:00 see you both!  
** **i'll bring wine and dessert**

_haha ta, Mary_

**_see you soon!!_ **

—

"Their names are James and Lily, James has been your best mate since halfway through year one, Lily hated him until she was sixteen, and they've been engaged for a year," Remus repeated dutifully to himself as he and Sirius made their way up the walkup stairs to James and Lily's flat several days later. 

"And James proposed with the ring in an empty bottle of Felix, whole thing got stuck in the neck and took twenty minutes to dislodge before he gave up and shattered the bottle. Work that one into conversation and Lily with canonize you," Sirius replied, shifting the pie in his hands to one arm to knock twice on the door as Remus laughed.

"Hallo!" Lily cried when she opened the door, wearing a rare shade of lipstick and a skirt that broadcasted _Lovely And Eager Hostess_ from its attractive pleats. "So glad you could make it," she sang, gesturing them into the entryway, "come in, come in!"

James emerged around the corner of the sitting room as Sirius took a brief hug from Lily, his expression alight with quelled James-brand eagerness. "You've brought the bloke and the wine, you can leave now, thanks," he sallied at Sirius, hefting him into their own clap of brotherly embrace as Lily moved to introduce herself to Remus. 

"And this is my fiancé, James, responsible for all the worst sides of Sirius," Lily said sweetly when she turned to them. 

"Reverse that," James said, taking Remus' hand in a solid shake with a smile. "James Potter, extremely pleased to finally meet you."

"Pleasure is mine," Remus replied. "In addition to myself and the wine, we've also brought dessert, which I believe definitely comes before me in the order of importance."

Lily laughed as Sirius extended the dish to her, home-made and still pleasantly warm for the charms wended around it. "Thank you! Here, Sirius, come help me in the kitchen. Remus, would you like anything to drink?"

"We've gin, bourbon, Firewhiskey, Dragon Barrel, much and more wine," James continued, guiding Remus into the sitting room as Sirius followed Lily through the cheerful little archway into their cramped-but-cozy kitchen. 

With the pie set to the counter swiftly, Lily rounded on Sirius like a pixie and jabbed a finger toward the sitting room. 

"You absolute berk," she hissed, careful to keep her voice just under the hum of the refrigerator, "you conveniently failed to let us know he's _bloody fucking gorgeous!"_

Sirius fought to stifle an eruption of laugher, so rare was a burst of profanity from Lily that wasn't heavily disguised by careful and exacting vocabulary. "I may have been hoarding that one truth for myself," he whispered back, enjoying the crimp of glee at the corners of his eyes. Lily huffed with exasperation and failed to bite back the smile dragging up the corners of her mouth. 

"My _God,_ Sirius, you have the dumbest luck in entire bloody universe."

"Ah, remember what Flitwick used to say? 'Luck is for Muggles, we have magic'," the hushed impression pinching Sirius' voice into his memory of the mousy lisp. Lily smirked fully and punched Sirius harmlessly over his heart. 

"Just like a Black to ignore the Muggle-born," she teased before turning to the little mid-century oven on which three pots were simmering with a charmed spoon twirling smoothly in one of them. "Hope you like stew," Lily said with normal volume resumed. 

"Can't get enough of it," Sirius replied with a healthy sigh, mirroring Lily's grin as she double-checked all the cooking. 

Back in the sitting room, James was quick to hand Sirius his measure of Firewhiskey without being asked. Sirius clinked glasses with him and sipped off the top to send a quieting pulse of inaudible calm through his veins before lowering himself into the open armchair beside the settee Remus had taken. Remus' elbows were balanced on his knees with a stout glass of gin held there, leaning forward with relaxed attention on James. 

"That's definitely a murky topic," James said to Remus, continuing an unbroken thread of introductory conversation. 

"I like to think of it as a personal challenge; how closely to their own ancient-as-bollocks limits can Dr. Lupin's studies push the university board until they cave in and just give him tenure to avoid a lawsuit?" Remus smiled to himself as James laughed, looking over to Sirius as he sipped lightly from the gin. He winked with an almost imperceptible cheekiness, to which Sirius replied in kind with a bloom of contentment in his belly. 

"So Remus," Lily said as she swept in with a glass of wine, settling comfortably next to James on the sofa, "Sirius tells us you play music alongside the academia?"

"Ah, yes, my trope precedes me." Remus stretched out one leg and chuckled to himself. "The Singing Professor, at your service!"

"How'd you fall into it, musical family?" James' eyes were bright as he put an arm around the couch back behind Lily's shoulders, and Sirius found himself shifting closer to Remus to hear the response as he realized he'd never asked on his own. 

"Not quite," Remus said, his head cocked slightly to the side at an angle of personal openness. "My mum is a painter, used to be a copywriter before she retired. She's a Muggle. My da was a Defense contractor with the London Ministry before he passed some years ago, not an artistic bone in his body. _His_ mum, my gran, was an opera singer though, I suppose it skipped a generation."

"So a bit of art from either side then," Lily said with friendly ease, and with a dosage of warmth Sirius recognized in the seat of her smile as the unconscious camaraderie she so rarely found lately with another wizard who had Muggle roots. 

They all dogged each other with stories and questions to gently break the ice of geniality. Sirius was quietly thrilled by the ease with which Remus was becoming friendly with James and Lily, so he mostly sat passenger to the pleasantries before an egg timer rattled off in the kitchen some time later to break the rhythm of it all.

"Dinner's nearly ready then, just have to check and I'll be right back," Lily said quickly, putting a pause on a story about the time James accidentally hexed a set of shark’s teeth around the edge of the dormitory sink in year five.

"Actually, do you mind if I come with?" Remus asked, rising into a steady stand. "I'd love to see what sort of charm setup you have in there."

Lily beamed as she waved Remus along with her, and James waited until they cleared the archway and Remus' amused spritz of laughter floated muffled across the hall to turn to Sirius with an ironclad stare. 

"He's fucking brilliant," James deadpanned under his breath. Sirius couldn't hold back a sly grin.

"You've never called me 'brilliant' before, but yes, and he's quite good at it," he crooned with a low voice, cackling when James scoffed and kicked at his shin. It felt really, stupidly good to be a tosser to James again.

"You know what I mean!" James admonished in a half-whisper, so similar to Lily in the kitchen that Sirius chuckled to himself again. "After months of not being yourself, not to mention the absolute dolts you wasted your time with before then, he’s a _god."_

"Were they really all dolts?" Sirius hummed as he sipped his drink. 

"Lily still brings up 'remember the wankstain with the mustache’ when she’s had a bit too much and starts in on worrying about you,” James said with a warning tone.

"Well she can rest easy, I've changed my ways. As you can see, Remus goes clean-shaven," Sirius replied. James sniffed a chuckle and opened his mouth to respond just as Lily popped around the corner. 

"Food!" She announced, to pull them up from their seats and toward the dining table on the other end of the hall. As Sirius passed her, he held in a yelp when he felt her knuckle dig into his side. "Don't fuck this one up, Black," she muttered, "because I'd still like him even _with_ a mustache."

Sirius hoped the pleasant rise of pink in his cheeks wasn't too obvious as they all sat down to the round oak tabletop, Remus helping Lily float steaming dishes of stew, bread, and sides to the center of the setting with concentrated little twitches of his wand in contrast to Lily's more liquid technique. 

"Do they teach you such fussy technique when you get a PhD?" Sirius teased without malice, pouring wine for Remus and Lily before James did the same for him and Sirius. Remus snorted and let a small plate of potatoes clatter in front of Sirius a bit too loudly to be an accident.

"It's like handwriting ruins itself after taking too many notes; my wand handling has learned how to take all sorts of short cuts, it's not fussy but _wizened,"_ he said with mock haughtiness. Sirius glanced immediately to James with a veiled _Stop That Innuendo Dead Right Now_ cut of the eyes just in time to see the idea flicker past behind his glasses with impish flair. Looking back to Remus though, he saw the subtle self-righteous mirth of the gorgeous prat knowing exactly what he was doing. 

To an inward mix of horror and ecstasy, Sirius was slowly accepting the fact that he was falling stupidly fast and extremely, stupidly hard.

Fucking innuendos. 

—

The summer evening air outside of James and Lily's flat, after a long visit with so much conversation and laughter that Sirius' voice was nearing raw about its edges, was endlessly welcome. 

"They're absolutely lovely," Remus said for the third time since dinner started, halfway down the block back in the direction of the university. Sirius smiled to himself. They had taken far too long saying goodbye in the front hall, with many and more promises to Do This Again Soon, which made him feel much-needed warmth at the core of his heart. It was exceedingly nice.

"I'm really glad you were able to finally meet them," he said through a relaxed sigh. He held in a start when Remus reached down to take his hand, fingers intertwined to a warm clasp—Sirius had only just come around to being alright with doing this in public, this, whatever _this_ meant to his fractured inner monologue, and even then only when there was still some semblance of privacy in being close to the only ones on the stretch of a walk. Remus was patient, but Sirius adored it when he let himself relax enough to accept the prod of affection. Remus' hands were beautiful, after all, so it only made sense to hold them. Loosing a tightened breath, “Where to now, professor?”

Remus smiled sideways at him, the yellow cone of a streetlamp catching the corner of his features and backlighting him like a day wraith. “I could drag you into Hagrid’s pub and waste several hours ’til sunrise belting lots of songs you don’t know the words to,” he hummed before stopping briefly with a scuff of his shoe on the asphalt. He kissed the back of Sirius’ hand, burning eye contact through the moment, as Sirius thought his heart might bottom out and drop through his guts. In a good way, of course. “Or we could go to mine and turn in for the night.”

Sirius’ throat tightened with anticipation, a feeling he supposed was happy but also thickly laden with the general anxiety of the unknown. He had never been to Remus’ flat before.

“As much as I love Hagrid’s pub and your singing all the words I don’t know,” Sirius replied after another shred of empty deliberation, clutching for words like handfuls of glittering sawdust, “I would much prefer yours.”

“Onward, then!”

The velvet of Remus’ voice had, Sirius realized as Remus led him across the empty green of campus towards a little fold of flats just off its southern border, a magical quality to it that called to mind the charms that made things bigger on the inside. But it was reversed; the way Remus spoke to him and caught Sirius’ attention so dearly made every exchange feel like they were the only two people on the planet most times. It would have been unnerving several months ago, but now was now. Things were getting easier. Sirius gripped the warm hand in his and replied in kind to the beatific smile that came over Remus’ shoulder in return.

—

If Sirius’ flat was a modern interior magazine’s dream, Remus’ studio walkup belonged in a museum of future headmasters’ lodgings.

The first thing that caught Sirius’ eye upon entry was _Bloody infinite books._ They were stacked like furniture itself, heavy tomes that might well have been ancient, cursed, spirited away from the restricted section of several libraries across the world for all he knew. They smelled faintly of comfort.

Remus moved through the stacks to remove his shoes and drape his shed sport coat over the back of a high, worn armchair as if they’d been towering around him for his entire life. Following suit to make himself as comfortable as possible without toppling anything, Sirius counted at least six different languages scrawled across the covers and spines of the volumes his eyes raked across in the cataloguing of the cozy little flat. It was, unsurprisingly, endearing to discover this was how Remus filled his space.

“It’s a bit—disarrayed,” Remus said from the edge of his bed as Sirius peered at the walls—nicely-framed posters for a couple Muggle folk bands, a television mounted across from the armchair and its twin, some photos of who he assumed was family and friends Sirius hadn’t met yet. “Sorry, I didn’t really have time to tidy up. And I guess it would have been presumptuous for me to assume you would have even agreed to come over tonight, and…well, this is Dr. Lupin’s flat. Hope it…impresses, or, you know. I guess. Here we are.”

Sirius pulled himself out of the reverie of observance at the chord an errant lilt in Remus’ voice struck just behind his ribs. He looked over to Remus, sitting on the foot on his neatly-made bed beyond a little half-wall at the edge of the sitting room, hands pressed between his knees as he peered up at Sirius and unconsciously chewed his lower lip. Sirius let a little breath of of a chuckle escape him without quite meaning to.

“Remus, are you nervous?” he asked gently. _Morgana bleeding_ , it was almost worth the squeeze of panging empathy to see the blush of red rise up on Remus’ cheeks. Sirius stepped over another stout pile of books as subtly as possible to sit down beside him, the sheets giving with a whisper at the displacement.

“A bit, yes,” Remus replied with starkness. The cagey bite of the words was mitigated by the honest eddies pooled in his eyes as he met Sirius’ gaze, but he kept himself summarily bunched up where he sat. Sirius touched his lower back softly.

“If you were worried about what I would think of the place, dispel that thought immediately. I think it’s got great character,” he said with muted eagerness. “Besides, it’s got you inside it.”

“I know, I was just…I dunno, Sirius.” The way he said Sirius’ name was consistently, maddeningly perfect. Every time. Remus sighed feather-light through a pause before shrugging with a shallow twitch of his shoulders. “I’m really good at making all this clutter seem very well put-together on the outside. It’s a necessary step inviting you into it, I suppose. I’ve been debating this for weeks, finally seemed like the right time. I hope.”

“Of course, Remus,” Sirius said immediately, reaching up to rest the same hand now at the nape of Remus’ neck with comforting touch. “Honestly? If it meant I got to sit on a bed with you, it would have been the right time even the same night we met.” The attempt at humor thankfully landed, drawing a short little chuckle out of Remus. Sirius waiting until Remus met his eyes again to continue.

“I like the flat,” he murmured, “I really like your books, I really like your organized chaos, and I really, really, _really_ like _you.”_

“You dramatic nancy,” Remus whispered with a soft smile finally breaking through his clouds, reaching up to pull Sirius into a kiss, tension still evident in his jaw and the cords of his neck but nothing Sirius hadn’t felt in himself before and knew exactly how to guide through the maze of progressing thought. To drown such preoccupation took only something far more enjoyable and exhaustive that they both were more than willing to give.

As they eased back onto the bed to press and pull one another closer in ardent shifts of bodies and breath, it was as if Remus’ ranks of books had somehow stolen the words they might have shared and trapped them, silent, in the secrets of their pages. It was all touch, all quiet requests granted permission by way of guiding hands, shown the trails to take with line after line of open-mouthed kisses across quickly-flushed skin—a particular ardency in the removal of whatever covered it.

Sirius broke the unnamed relative silence with a plea of Remus’ name after some minutes of the slow-smoldering fervor, the path of Remus’ tongue moving down, down, veritably searing him, the library sensation of the flat making it feel taboo, immediate, infinitely more sexy to be undone like this, “ _Remus,_ fuck, oh—!“ Sirius reached down automatically to hold to the first thing he could use as an anchor, landed on Remus’ arm, gripped hard and gasped again when the touch on his cock turned into Remus’ mouth, steady and insistent in slow, indulgent curls of his tongue on the spot he had discovered as his favorite to focus on about a month ago. Sirius chanced a look down and groaned into the academic quietude again when the sight of Remus looking up at him with a spear-bright exaction of encouraging, expectant eyes. _Fucking mercy_ , the man was too much. All too much, all too good.

He had predicted it correctly: at this rate, with this much of Sirius’ unsaid heart at stake, Remus Lupin was liable to turn him to dust.

—

Inhaling the trace of sweet musk against his pillow bore Sirius into bleary waking like the silent surge of a mainsail. He squinted his eyes open to the pale light filling the room, the clock that didn’t belong to Sirius on the opposite side of the bed that wasn’t his either broadcasting just after 5 o’ clock in the morning. There was a warm presence to the room that felt like anonymous peace, and as Sirius steadily focused on the curve of shoulders and neck and forehead in the foreground of his view, he recognized its source.

Sirius had had a measure of trouble falling asleep the previous night. After dizzying, addling, staggeringly fantastic sex, it should have been easy to drift off—Remus had been out after not even five minutes, but Sirius had lain awake for at least an hour longer listening to his steady breathing and the abject absence of sound caused by the piles of books he knew were there despite the heavy layer of late summer night darkness. Clearing his head to let his mind just _go_ was impossible. He couldn’t have quit himself from meditating on Remus for anything.

It was only the roaring approach of the most basic exhaustion that had finally swallowed Sirius, and now that he was coming out of it for at least a short spell of time he could think of nothing better to do than let his tired eyes drink in the gift of the man still sleeping beside him.  
  
Remus’ stillness was something out of a masterwork from the sixteenth century brought to life by the European wizards of Caravaggio, da Vinci, Raphael. His eyelids sat closed in beatific calm, his breathing slow and even through slightly parted lips. His hair fell across his forehead much like the fall of his arm across his midsection—gently, quietly dynamic. Sirius watched the simple plane of Remus’ chest rise and fall for several patterns of in and out, the soft skin pale amber in the half-light. Sirius’ own lungs gripped with an emotion he couldn’t name through the fog of his own sleepiness. Love? Again? Not worth trying to parse it out when he could hardly find the energy to blink.  
  
Something in his core was telling him this was right. This was a destination, this was arrival, this was the start of something wholly necessary to him. Letting his eyes flutter shut in a wave of returning sleepiness, knowing he would wake up to the same sight, Sirius went adrift again in a gorgeous sprawl of slumber.


	8. Verse 8 - Breakdown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The lay of the land is beautiful lately, but every continent has its fault lines—and what's near is long overdue for a quake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Playlist for "9" is available at https://open.spotify.com/user/spontaneousness/playlist/7M9d9BUDdlIyYw0X9pHYNi

_"I remember it well,  
_ _The first time that I saw  
_ _Your head around the door,  
_ _'Cause mine stopped working._

 _I remember it well,_  
_There was wet in your hair,  
_ _I was stood in the stairs,  
_ _And time stopped moving._

 _I want you here tonight,  
_ _I want you here,  
_ _'Cause I can't believe what I found;  
_ _Oh, and you're here, and I want you here,  
_ _Nothing is taking me down, down, down..."_

Something innate and fierce told Sirius that if he stirred right now he would regret it for the rest of his waking life.

Remus' down-soft voice was floating into Sirius' consciousness from over the half-wall beside the bed, the pluck-and-strum of a guitar just barely touched enough to make a sound accompanying it. Sirius could picture it in his mind's eye as he pretended to stay asleep—Remus lounged across one of the armchairs, sleeping bottoms and tousled hair only making him look lovelier, cradling his guitar like an extension of himself while he whispered music into the morning light as if it were a ritual like any other, as commonplace as coffee or tea. 

_"I remember it well,  
_ _Taxied out of a storm  
_ _To watch you perform,  
_ _And my ships were sailing._

 _I remember it well,  
_ _I was stood in your line,  
_ _And your mouth, your mouth, your mind…_

 _I want you here tonight,  
_ _I want you here,  
_ _'Cause I can't believe what I found;  
_ _Oh, and you're here, and I want you here,  
_ _Nothing is taking me down, down, down..."_

The words throbbed with a secretive tenderness, spurred to life by spontaneous creativity that couldn't have been held back through even the thickest bastion of sleep. Sirius felt his emotions clench tight in his guts, twisting his resolve like an arm behind his shoulder but not half as painful, just a spur to action, _move, speak, wake the hell up, seize this moment standing._ Remus had finished singing and was just idly plucking through the pleasing accompaniment melody, such a rambling and secretive meditation that it sounded like an invitation now. Mustering courage up through the depths, Sirius stretched with the lightest yawn. 

Remus' strumming continued, but the shift of cloth sounded from his direction as Sirius pretended to slowly break through the fog of sleep. "Morning," Remus hummed, sounding infinitely pleased, "did I wake you?"

"Not with the tune, no," Sirius said through a wide, fake yawn, "just heard the last little bit there, made waking up a lot more enjoyable, actually."

Remus breathed a short little chuckle. "Good, I'm glad."

Sirius sat up to stretch fully, still wrapped up in sheets and winking through the gentle grey of the light breaking through closed not-quite-blackout curtains on the window beside him. He watched Remus from over the half-wall, profile concentrated as he watched his own fingers on the guitar, and felt his heart hammer mercilessly in his chest. 

"I like that song a lot," Sirius said as he raked his hair back out of his eyes. He reveled in the genuineness of the smile that spread along Remus' lips, which didn't still his noodling on the guitar but did pull his gaze. 

"It's an older one, but it fit the morning mood too well to ignore the itch in my fingers to play when I woke up," he murmured. Sirius heard the bed covers hiss between his fingers as he unconsciously clenched his fists with the flex of raw feeling. His heartbeat hadn't slowed down since picking up, racketing along through his veins like wild horses, _Fucking hell, this is too much—_ "I'm really glad you stayed over last night, Sirius." Remus quirked a smile at him before turning back to look down at his playing. The pre-noon sunlight caught him like a dream; the ease of his existence was almost deafening. 

“I—am too," Sirius replied, suddenly baffled by the rising pulse in his ears and the pitch of his stomach. He stared down at the white of the sheets and tried to force himself into calm; _No, you useless ponce, you canNOT have a panic attack the first morning you stay over at your boyfriend's flat, why the fuck are you like this?!_ Silence fell between them like a hammer stroke, and only when it stretched on for a bit too long to be simply quiet comfort did Remus stop playing.

"Hey, you alright?" The gentle clatter of Remus closing his guitar case and the brief shuffle of movement for him to come kneel on the bed sounded as staticky, faded noise to Sirius' ears. _Fuck. Fucking breathe, don’t—_ Warm touch on his shoulder nearly made him jump. "Sirius?"

"'M fine, it’s—I don't know, this hasn't happened in a while," Sirius said shakily, still training his eyes down in an effort to focus on nothing. He wished his hands would quit shaking. "I haven't had trouble sleeping in a while, and—I, maybe my brain's been confused by all the _happiness,_ fuck," he rambled. "I'm sorry, give it a second to work its way out. Sorry."

"It's fine," Remus murmured, "take your time." He stroked Sirius' shoulder slowly, and Sirius could feel the pinpricks of his watchful eyes like beacons. "Can I hold you while it passes?"

Sirius said nothing but shifted forward to lean into Remus, closing his eyes as if in a shock of ice when the strong arms wrapped around him with a warm reassurance of gentleness. Sirius counted his breaths as they were pulled back from the precipice of hyperventilation, slowing along with his erratic heart to keep him from rioting out of his skin. As the wave of shaky pins-beneath-the-skin feeling moved through him like a steady storm, Sirius closed his eyes for several long minutes to drag himself back into existing. 

It had seemed, for a while, like his bouts with panic were at least tamed. This felt like a setback, a strange hiccup in the radar of an otherwise clean track record of Dealing With It. Back in the muted and pale light of the present, a strange sense of emptiness felt marginally filled. Remus' arms felt _safe._ Purpose boiled at the ends of Sirius' capillaries like crackling magic—perhaps it all really was magic; the draw to another person, the willingness to carve oneself open and expose ugly secrets that somehow made each more beautiful to the other? _Morgana's tits,_ he was so exceedingly bad at waxing philosophical but Sirius felt like he might not be entirely wrong. He kissed Remus' shoulder like a punctuation mark and sat back on his heels to meet Remus' eyes. 

"Better?" Remus asked simply. Sirius could have kissed him again for the plain acceptance of his bullshit, if nothing else at all.

"Much. Thank you, honestly."

Remus stood to pull on a jumper slung across the half-wall and reach for a mug of tea that Sirius hadn't noticed was brewed beside it. He passed it to Sirius with a smile. "It isn't coffee, but I figure we can go for breakfast if you're really in dire straits for bean water."

"You tosser," Sirius muttered, grinning automatically and accepting the mug with a bloom of warmth in his chest. He sipped from it with meditative deliberateness as he watched Remus stretch long, his arms singing out to the tips of his fingers like graceful tree boughs, in front of the gauzy plane of his curtains. Sirius felt himself drawing breath before he even knew what he was doing. 

“Remus—" Bright eyes moved to watch him with such bemused intrigue that Sirius had to swallow, clench his jaw, shift the tea in his hands before starting again. He thought of how he must look, nested amid the sheets in nothing but his pants with his hair hanging mussed and quite probably waving in every which-way for its tendency to curl slightly on its own, staring close to dumbfounded at the gorgeous construction of Remus. Sirius tried for once to get himself out of his own head and stop waffling. For bloody fucking _once._

"Remus, I know it's early, but I love you," he said softly.

When his tongue didn't burst into flames after spinning the truth, he found he couldn't quite hold onto the levee of his feelings anymore. Still keeping their eye contact like a lifeline, knowing he would falter if he looked away, Sirius continued. "You haven't once given me shit for anything I've been hesitant to reveal, you're the most honest man I think I've ever spoken with, let alone taken to bed, you make me feel safe and—and _happy,_ and it makes it easier to look back on the last few months and not want to dissolve, Remus, you—“ Sirius loosed a tight little sigh and shook his head to himself as if clearing out a puff of dust in the attic. "I feel like I finally know enough about what I'm feeling to confidently tell you this. I love you."

Finally looking away, down at his knees, Sirius sipped deeply from the tea. Remus was, patiently or confusedly, it was anyone's bet at this point, allowing him beats of silence to re-gather himself. "I don't expect anything in return, I just want you to know," Sirius finally mumbled. 

The bed creaked pleasantly as Remus leaned back down into a sit, and he pulled Sirius close by the shoulder to draw him in without jogging the tea in his hand. Sirius closed his eyes automatically at the press of a kiss that was warm, even, slow, and soft; Remus held him there for a lovely moment in which Sirius breathed in the closeness of him like a drug. When Remus pulled back, his eyes were blessedly clear. 

"Thank you," he murmured, "for telling me that. You're an absolute gift, Sirius."

"Christmas or birthday?" Sirius' humor felt feeble behind his teeth, but Remus chuckled nonetheless.

"Both, at once, every day of the year," he crooned. Sirius knew a blush was rising on his cheeks, but he found he liked the feeling of it this morning. Remus watched him wordlessly for another couple of seconds, his eyes flicking across Sirius as if he were cataloguing the figure on his bed. "Do you want to go on a day trip sometime?" He asked suddenly. Sirius rose his eyebrows. It was good to draw the conversation away from the present outburst. 

"Sure, where to?"

"Wexford. I want you to meet my mum."

Sirius felt his heart stammer, which apparently showed on his face for the bright laughter that leapt out of Remus. He batted harmlessly at Sirius foot. "You don't have to if you don't want to, but I think you would really like her. You could talk about art, and I could show you around some of my old haunts."

Sirius supposed, as he sipped from his tea again— _Irish Breakfast, what a wonderful berk he is—_ this was Remus' way of returning the magnitude of affection. He clearly wasn't ready to return the phrase in full, nor did Sirius expect him to immediately. Sirius was acutely attuned to the tightness at the corner of Remus' eyes and the lopsided tension of his mouth; none of it sinister, but all limned with the familiar flavor of At Arms' Length. It was alright. They had nothing but time. Sirius set the mug back on the half-wall and, with a gut like clouds of butterflies, smiled.

—

Two weeks passed quickly, with a couple more sets at pubs from Remus dragging away a third of the evenings in pleasant twists of song and drink. The rest of the time was wrapped up in a new split of days and nights spent between Sirius' and Remus' flats in a fresh division of days. It was all sorts of lovely to the fibers of Sirius' personal growth. 

Outside the main bay of the central Floo station just off campus, Sirius grinned and waved wide to hail Remus as he extinguished a cigarette on the wall. Remus returned the hand, picking up a brisk step to a jog until he reached Sirius' side.

"Sorry, two students stayed back with some questions," he said with slight breathlessness. "Ready?"

"Whenever you are," said as he swept an arm out toward the entry door. As he followed Remus inside, ranks of sleek hearths greeted them from the opposite wall. Several of them were staffed with attendants in orange robes and aglow with green cinders, and the one nearest the two men extended a bag of Floo powder when Sirius and Remus approached the hearth beside him.

"Off to Wexford," Remus said genially as he grabbed a fistful of powder. Turning to Sirius, "It's 'Twelve, Breezecourt, Wexford.'"

Sirius was struck with the urge to kiss him farewell, regardless of the fact they would only be seconds apart. He settled for smiling, again. He’d been doing that a lot recently. 

When Remus had been transported and Sirius dashed the powder at his feet to announce the address, Sirius hoped the nervous buzzing behind his molars would go away soon. Flames died around him soon, just as he heard a melodic pour of female laughter. 

"And this must be Sirius?"

Sirius blinked his eyes open through a puff of chimney ashes, and in a split second of self-reflection understood immediately that this woman was Good—the same introductory sentence he could still hear echoing in the dark in dead voices of vile relatives from childhood rang now with far more warmth and kindness. 

The woman in question was a carbon female copy of Remus save for the color of her hair and eyes. She shared the same squared jaw and open brow, the slim nose that tipped up ever so slightly at the end of its graceful slope, the same tilt to her mouth—the opposite side of the face than Remus, but that slightly-lopsided smile was exactly his, sweetly-shaped lips included. Her hair was the same wavy-flirting-with-curly tumble but in a mass of strawberry blonde instead of honeyed brown, falling to her shoulders. She was a compact woman, small and fine-boned and beautiful in a confident, matriarchal way, and the artist in Sirius found himself wanting to see Remus' late father as well to compare from where Remus received his strong stature and green eyes.

Not wanting to be construed for staring, Sirius stooped out if the hearth and extended a hand. "Sirius Black," he said openly, contentment flickering in him that the name would carry none of its baggage for a Muggle woman from Ireland. 

"Hope Lupin," she replied as she ignored his hand and pulled him into a hug instead. Remus' smile from behind his mother's back was apologetic and heartily glad all at once.

"Thank you for having us for the afternoon," Sirius said when they parted. Her perfume smelled faintly of verbena, which Sirius supposed was a fragrance given to every mother along with their crying infant and a birth certificate in hospital on their firstborn's birthday. 

"Any excuse to have tea and a good talk, isn't that right?" Hope eyed Remus with good nature and raised an eyebrow to Sirius. "Don't hold it against him if he isn't very good at returning your calls, he's been too busy knocking about in his mind since he was a boy," she muttered conspiratorially. 

"Should I put on the kettle then, while you continue to rot my better half's brain against me?" Remus announced from where he stood. Sirius' lungs gripped deliciously at _Better Half_ while Hope chuckled to herself. 

"Yes! Sirius, come sit," she said, waving Sirius over to a cozy sitting area as Remus moved, presumably, into the kitchen. "Have you visited much outside of England?"

Sirius chose a high-backed armchair across from the well-worn seat that Hope had settled herself into. A pile of several novels were stacked up on a side table to her left, with a slim pair of reading glasses set beside them. "Ah, not very much, no. A couple trips to France when I was a boy, there’s—was some family there, but that's about it."

"Well, welcome to Ireland," Hope said with a smile and a little gesture to the sitting room. Echoes of Remus' own space were here, with the ranks of bookshelves and academically attractive lay of decor. "Is there anything in particular you were planning on doing here?"

"Remus mentioned showing me his favorite pub, seeing the waterfront, just the regular circuit I suppose."

"Ah, Moody's an old friend of ours. One of his father's colleagues from their school days; doesn't it seem like all those older wizards retire, get bored, and then open a pub?”

Sirius had to laugh at that, because Albus fit the exact situation. "There are a couple back home, yes, I think you're onto something!"

Remus entered then with a laden tea tray, three cups and a charmed-hot teapot around a small plate of biscuits. Hope made a slight sound of disapproval as he set it down on the coffee table between them. 

"Remy, you could have done for the _nice_ biscuits," Hope hummed as she leaned in to pour the cup in front of Sirius. 

"But these are my favorites, and I promise Sirius isn't a snob," Remus said, biting into a biscuit for punctuation with a charming smirk that his mother mirrored unconsciously. 

"Only for the truly important things in life, like gin," Sirius quipped. A thrum of pride stirred in him when Hope laughed. 

"Oh, I like you already," she said contentedly, settling back in her chair with poured tea and a lemon wedge. Sirius couldn't help the grin he felt invading his features and, with a feeling that was becoming quite commonplace, didn't dislike it at all. 

They talked through all the introductory steps of the conversational dance Sirius had gotten quite good at lately—how did Sirius like school, what a lovely name Hope thought he had, how did he and Remus meet, what sorts of hobbies did he keep up. At the detailing of Sirius' penchant for ink and paper, bolstered by Remus' insistence that he was much better than he let on, Hope's eyes brightened even further. 

"Remus has told you I paint, I'm sure?"

"Of course, although I've no talent for the medium myself," Sirius replied as Hope set down her empty teacup and stood. She motioned for Sirius to follow, and Remus loosed a breath of a chuckle as he did the same.

"I'd be interested to know what you think of this studio setup," Hope said in preamble as she led them out of the sitting room and down a narrow hall. "It's fairly new. None of my friends really have the taste for proper lighting when I've asked them, and I've had trouble getting my more recent pieces to _feel_ right, I guess is the issue." She opened up a basement door and gestured for the men to head down ahead of her with a brisk eagerness that made Sirius imagine she would have been exceedingly, fiercely bright as a young woman. Remus certainly inherited the predisposition, and Sirius caught a slightly apologetic look laced with adoration when he glanced behind him through his descent to grin at Remus. 

"I feel like I might need to knock another window into the foundations, I've always liked natural light best," Hope said as she came down behind them, "but I don't want to bring the whole house down on top of me either."

_"Please_ stop smashing away bits of the house on your own, mum, that's what contractors are for," Remus groaned. Hope scoffed with enough strength to quiet the admonishment.

“That’s what they write the do-it-yourself books for too, my goodness. I’ve got four limbs and a brain, and it’s more interesting to puzzle it out,” Hope sniffed. Remus only heaved a weary sigh in response.

"I only ever use natural light," Sirius returned to the main conversational thread as he rounded the last bend of the staircase into a cozy, recently-finished basement space. "Gives me an excuse to quit for the day at sunset too, so I don't get sheared too thin."

"Would that I had the resolve to tear myself away from the work sometimes, Lord knows _that_ runs in the family," Hope said as she batted Remus harmlessly on the shoulder. 

The stark little setup in front of them was simple, with an easel that was well-loved and easily 50 years old for the ingrained paint stains and nicks scoring its surface. It held an unfinished canvas of the still life set up on a pedestal just in front of it, all illuminated by weak daylight in two half-windows that looked out to ground level at the height of the walls and a hanging lamp with a wide cone of light. 

"This is good to manufacture shadows," Sirius mused as he pointed at the lightbulb and took in the style of the work in progress. The brush strokes were small and tight with obvious calculation, a more attractive smudge of reality with pretty shimmers of the oil paints. An obstinate-looking orange had half a stain of shadow across it currently,and Sirius appreciated its liveliness as Hope stepped nearer to stand beside him. 

"You don't think it's too yellow?" She asked, peering up at the bulb with crossed arms. Sirius thought automatically back to a night a couple days ago that had Remus pacing across his flat with a quill behind his ear and another charmed and a-fly across a swath of parchment, dictating madly while Sirius watched from the bed with rivers of attraction wending through him. The same knit of his brow was mirrored now in Hope as she scrutinized her makeshift studio. 

"You could charm it whiter if need be," Sirius said automatically without thinking. He didn't catch himself until Hope laughed. “I—sorry, no," he scrambled, "I think it actually lends a nice quality to your technique. Which is wonderful, by the way." 

"Thank you, Sirius," Hope said through the tail of her bright laughter, "I appreciate that." She looked to him with a motherly smile, her arms crossed easily where she stood beneath the lamp in the otherwise dim basement. To his right, Sirius caught the shape of Remus standing with, unconsciously, the same stance. The calm contentment in their expressions was selfsame, again—Hope looking at Sirius with pleased bemusement, Remus looking at his mother with a mix of relief and boyish adoration. It made his heart sing with foreign tones.

Visiting Wexford was shaping out to be quite a perfect decision.

—

"She likes you."

Remus was smiling a reigned-in, secretive little smile as they made their way down the sidewalk on the Wexford waterfront. They had taken a late lunch after tea and a bit more time with Hope, and Sirius enjoyed the slow bustle of the docks that sprawled before the long stretch of pubs alongside them. He smiled to himself. 

"Passed the exam, did I, professor?”

"With flying colors."

"And honors, I'm sure."

"Oh of course, _cum laude."_

"I can think of one other thing I make 'come loudly,'" Sirius said airily, looking off into to the middle distance only to break into a spasm of a smile on his own when Remus burst into laughter.

“You horrible fucking ponce,” Remus muttered as he chucked Sirius’ shoulder with his own. Sirius reveled in the amusement bouncing around at the back of his skull.

“She really likes me?” He asked, turning to face Remus as they kept walking, squinting one eye against the nearly-set sun on the horizon.

_“Yes,_ Sirius,” Remus muttered with a barely-held-in roll of his eyes. “When you stopped into the bathroom before we left, she made sure to let mw know that you’re far out of my league and I’m the luckiest sod this side of the Atlantic.”

Sirius bit down on another prideful smile. “She’s right, you know.”

“Fuck off,” Remus said with a snort of laughter before jerking his head to the left to indicate a bright blue sign that read _MAD EYE_ in gold lettering. “Buy me a drink.”

The din of a well-attended pub roared into the present as Remus pushed open the swinging entry door and whistled sharply. A few heads turned and smiled greetings when they saw Remus, but the barkeep was the one to exclaim the arrival like a herald.

“REMUS LUPIN!” He roared, arms flinging out in greeting. The stocky man had thinning blonde hair down to his chin, a toothy smile with surprisingly perfect teeth, and gold eyepatch over one eye that told more about his character than any amount of adjectives Sirius could think to drum up. As Remus leaned over the bar to accept a clapped, one-armed embrace from the man, the barkeep ruffled his curls with one hand like an old relative. “Been bloody well long enough, Merlin afire! Where the hell is your guitar, my boy!”

“Only staying for a couple drinks this time, Alastor,” Remus replied through a wide smile. “I brought my good friend to see Wexford, meet Sirius!”

Sirius’ stomach clenched involuntarily at the title, glancing around the pub to see denizens that, while certainly different than Albus’ regulars, seemed far from hostile.

“Welcome, welcome, glad to have you, how do you like our town, lad? Alastor Moody, call me one or the other or both at once, welcome to Mad Eye!” Moody rambled, seizing Sirius’ hand in an enthused shake that fairly crushed his knuckles. A remnant corner of panicking stress in Sirius’ core stiffened like glass at the sudden onslaught of invasive personality, but he trained himself down immediately to as natural a grin as he could pull up at short notice.

“House gin if you please, Alastor,” Remus requested as he slid into one of the bar stools. Moody snorted sarcastically as he readied two glasses for a pour in front of them men once Sirius was seated as well.

“I dunno how far to trust you without a tab from the stage,” Moody growled as he opened an unlabeled bottle of clear liquor to make the tall, simple drinks.

“I’m good for it, you know that; da would rise up and haunt the shit out of me if I ever left you unmet,” Remus joked. Moody cracked a brusque, wheezy laugh and slid each glass across the bar.

“He’d see you tripped into the quay to get your ears wet and say ‘must’ve been a breeze, eh?’” Sirius caught a wistful flash of grief in Moody’s one blue eye, bright and sharp and familiar to Sirius’ deepest self. “You know I’m joking, lad, no charge. Enjoy yourself!”

“Alastor, come on—“

Remus was silenced by Moody’s upraised and scarred palm. “Hush.” He pointed suddenly to Sirius, his gaze alight with mischievous fervor. “Sirius, glad to meet—enjoy the gin, don’t let this one drag you to too many other pubs.”

“He can hold his drink just fine,” Remus deadpanned.

“I don’t doubt it,” Moody crowed, “I’m just warning him this is the only good one in town!” He laughed again, mostly to himself, but Sirius couldn’t help joining when Remus dissolved into involuntary chuckles. The older man made his way down the bar to resume a spirited conversation he had clearly put on hold, and Remus sighed happily when he downed a sip of the gin.

“He and my father worked for the Ministry together,” Remus explained a low voice that covered the distance between them without being too outward. It was a slightly confounding distance, much more closed-off than normal, but Sirius swallowed the buzz in his throat and started in on his own drink. It bit well, with a madness of juniper.

“He makes a good home brew,” Sirius said, holding back a stiff cough. Remus twitched forward as if to touch Sirius’ back but immediately arrested himself and diverted the motion to another sip of drink. Sirius clenched his jaw—this felt off. “Are you alright?” he murmured furtively. 

“Yeah, why—“ Remus seemed to catch the thread of Sirius’ veiled look and sighed with a disarming smile. “I have appearances to keep up,” he said, almost imperceptible above the din of the pub.

“And?” Sirius took another long draught of gin, trying not to let his frustration build.

“I left Wexford for a reason, Sirius, half of… _me_ isn’t valid here. ‘My friend.’” The stress in his voice was purposeful, and Sirius did his best to ease down the fiery pinch of his insides at that. Of course, he had only ever had to burn bridges when he was out. Remus probably ran from most of his own skeletons in the closet to let them smolder or extinguish on their own, site unseen. “But—I wanted you to see it. It’s an important part of me.”

This amendment washed Sirius’ nerves like fresh water, and he tried to communicate the kiss he would have pressed to Remus’ hand, held in his own if they were back at home, with a look. Remus seemed to understand as he raised his glass to clink merrily against Sirius’ own.

_Fuck it_ , Sirius thought to himself, _a bit of espionage never hurt anybody._

—

After two tall gins and a round of storytelling from Remus, the other regulars, and Moody that made Sirius cry laughing, the two men exited the bar on the wings of heady happiness.

“You never told me you went for the Auror exam after school,” Sirius said, still laughing with residual spasms as Remus began leading him down the cobblestones again.

“You never asked,” Remus sang. His voice was alight with ease, and Sirius’ blood chanted with the absolute perfection of it. They walked along with shared silence, appreciating one another’s presence despite the space forcibly yawned out between them, before Sirius sighed as he watched a passing light splash Remus’ features with gorgeous shadows.

“I wish I could kiss you here in public,” he said just under his breath, which painted Remus’ cheeks pink and made the image even lovelier.

“When we get home, you certainly can,” he whispered. Sirius bit his lip to keep from saying something even more ridiculous, and the way Remus’ eyes glittered at that just made him turn the motion into the stifling of a spasmodic chuckle.

“What,” he demanded softly. They had stopped in front of the space between a lively-sounding pub and a closed-up shop, and alley opening just behind them. Sirius had half a mind, depending on whatever Remus opened that beautiful mouth to respond with, to pull them both backwards for a much-needed snog before carrying on.

“Nothing,” Remus hummed coyly.

“You’re an awful liar,” Sirius said. He reigned himself in but still allowed himself the privilege of keeping his gaze trained like a magnet on Remus’ own.

“It’s nothing,” Remus repeated, but his eyes softened as he said it. It was a unique expression Sirius had never seen on him before.

“Doesn’t sound like _nothing.”_ Sirius quirked one eyebrow and thoroughly enjoyed the riot of esoteric shifts that sparked briefly in Remus’ pupils. “If I didn’t know any better,” he teased lightly, enjoying the thrill of toeing the line, “I’d think you were about to say you love me.”

Remus took half a step forward, almost hesitant, and drew a slow breath. His expression was absolute peace, an arrival, a reflection of everything Sirius had felt that morning in Remus’ flat two weeks ago. Sirius’ breath caught in his lungs— _Holy shit, he’s—_

A burst of raucous laughter suddenly tumbled from the pub behind them and ripped away Remus’ attention, which felt like a serrated knife taking flesh and blood with it from Sirius’ chest. Sirius had no idea why the shift hurt so badly, why it made his insides turn, but when he opened his mouth to ask if everything was alright for the second time that night Sirius was stopped by the unexpected rigidity in Remus’ shoulders.

Sirius followed Remus’ pinpoint and disbelieving stare to the steps of the pub they faced now, where a smallish woman with short black hair was waving goodbye to somebody within as she descended the stoop to the sidewalk. Remus seemed petrified in place, and Sirius almost moved to shake his shoulder to snap him out of it when the woman reached the sidewalk and noticed them for the first time. She stopped dead, hand frozen in the dig through her bag, with her eyes flying wide for a split second before some sort of inner barrier flew up and iced her stare.

“Remus,” she said matter-of-factly, her voice musical like a high bell—ringing and clear, but not melodic in the slightest. Sirius was vaguely annoyed that his favorite sum of two syllables could sound like plain cardboard in somebody else’s mouth.

It was a blank second until Remus responded, and when he did his own voice was trained to bland stillness; “Alice.”

Sirius’ heart hitched high in his throat at the abject rage boiling beneath the surface of Remus' voice. _Fuck,_ this was her, then. Sirius did his best to take stock of the woman without outright staring while her attention was trained mostly on Remus. She resumed the motion of drawing a pack of cigarettes from her purse and tapped one out with deft fingers. Lighting it with a snap, she extended the pack to Remus. 

"Your old favorites," she said around the filter between her lips. Remus said nothing so Alice scoffed, turning instead to Sirius with an eyebrow raised in offering. 

"No, thanks," Sirius said with a palm raised, his voice inexplicably hoarse. He swallowed to try and whet his vocal cords while Alice took a deep drag on her cigarette and looked back at Remus. 

“Well, it looks like you've gone rude in your absence," she sighed. "What's brought you back?"

Remus remained silent, his back tight and too-straight, his jaw muscles working with the flex of tension. Sirius took a step forward to try and deflect any confrontation, the scuff of his shoe sounding too-loud against the noise of the pub beside them. Alice immediately trained the dark blue of her eyes on him instead, expectant beneath her surface with a demanding sort of acuity. 

"Just visiting for the day," Sirius said in an attempt at banality. Regardless, Alice's eyes flashed and she turned back to Remus.

"Bullshit, you wouldn't come back without seeing your mum, did you—ohhh, Remy." Alice stopped and suddenly broke into a small smile, arrogant and feline as she shifted her weight into a sat-back stand and tilted her head. "This is your boyfriend, isn't it?"

Sirius felt fury light up in him like a Roman candle. "You can speak directly to me, I'm right here—“

"Shut the fuck up, Alice." Remus' words were pure black ice, a tone that dared unwary travelers to test his thin and dangerous limits. Sirius had never seen Remus angry beyond mild annoyance at anyone, any _thing,_ before. It was horribly unsettling. Alice only laughed to herself, which was equally grating to hear. 

"You swore, up and down, that I would never see you again," she said coolly. "What was it? 'If you can't respect me enough for basic honesty, then get out of my life for good.' Hmm. It was so rehearsed." Alice inspected her nails with a casualness that teemed with knowing she was riling Remus dangerously. She was _enjoying_ this, _Merlin rotting, what a fucking harpy._

"Good evening then, if you'll excuse us—“ Sirius moved to guide Remus' elbow to walk past her, careful to keep the touch liminal and far away from intimate, but Remus was struck rigid as steel and Alice only smirked again.

"What, kipping off to clean his pipes?" Alice taunted, looking directly at Sirius. He bristled, but he managed to keep the retaliation smothered deep down in him. Best to leave this one to Remus; Sirius knew nothing about this woman despite her propensity to manipulate her way out of a sealed room. Her face had twisted up into the beginnings of a sneer, and it was becoming exceedingly clear she was the type if person to let nothing go. "Does he still like being choked in bed? That was always a favorite of his, and you get to—“

"Where's Frank?" Remus demanded, cutting her off. Color had risen in his cheeks in a clear mix of fury and embarrassment. 

"He's in America for work, got a promotion last month," Alice bit back. Sirius looked furtively between them, at once not wanting to get involved at all with this old, festering wound of a relationship but feeling the innate need to protect Remus. He felt at a loss for the first time in several months. 

"So _that's_ why you're on edge then," Remus spat, "worried he'll have a fling or two without you overseas? Cat's away, mouse will play?"

"Fuck you," Alice snarled. She pinched her half-finished cigarette into dust. "Go write a fucking song about it if you're so interested in butting in around here again." The words had an air of finale to them, but neither she nor Remus made to move off. The several seconds of standoff made Sirius feel sick. He had no love for this side of Remus, this vindictiveness, where had this been hiding?

"You look tired," Remus said finally, and something in the cadence of the words made it clear this was an insult that carried far too much history behind it for Sirius to decipher. To his uneasy surprise, Alice laughed. 

"You're one to talk, you high-and-mighty cunt. _Doctor_ Lupin," she said with boorish emphasis. When she looked again at Sirius like an afterthought, it pitched his insides uncomfortably. "He even _looks_ like me, Rem, fuck. Have you no originality?"

"He's _nothing_ like you—“

"How long have you been at it then? A month? Two?" Alice snorted and jerked her chin bluntly at Remus. "He brought me to meet Hope after—“

"Keep my mother's name out of your fucking mouth."

_“—After,_ only two months." Alice hardened her stare on Sirius, vocally ignoring Remus' interjection. "He falls fast and he falls hard and nearly breaks his neck in the process. Has he told you he loves you yet? That was another early arrival back in the day. Fucking premature." Alice's body language had calcified into a furious stance, and the force of firing out the muttered hate in the last two words was almost shocking. 

"That's none of your bloody business," Sirius found himself saying immediately, his hackles raising in defiance.

"Down, boy, Jesus, I'm just trying to warn you, you fucking poof," Alice sneered, taking half a step back away from Sirius. It took an iron clamp of will on all of Sirius' better tendencies to not leap forward and gouge her eyes out. 

_"Stop it,_ Alice," Remus hissed. 

"Now you deign to use my name? I'm honored," Alice drawled. She hitched the strap of purse higher on her shoulder and looked between the two men as if they were undesirable puppies that had shown up on her doorstep. "Frank and I are moving to America for good at the end of summer, so I suppose this is the last time I ever have to suffer the sight of you."

"Good, you can get a taste of your own brew when he fucks somebody's wife and leaves you for her." Remus had crossed his arms, and his knuckles where white where they dug into his sleeves with unconscious strength. 

Alice's face slipped for a moment into blind fury out of her well-composed mask, but she sighed as if she was repeating herself over and over again to a child and reassumed the mantle of vague distaste almost immediately. "We were never married, Remus, you always seem to forget that."

"Strange. I wonder if its because I saw the promise of a ring and a wedding date as a bit more than just playing house," Remus said viciously. 

"Aren't you lucky, then? You should be thanking me!" Alice began walking backwards in finality, her arms wide in exhibition of the two men standing before her. "Now you just get to bruise your throat on cock all day long and make shitty music about how much your arse 'hurts so good' after this one plows you. Goodnight, Moony, _fuck you."_ She stuck up both her middle fingers with almost impressive force before about-facing and continuing briskly down the sidewalk back into town.

Sirius stood in stunned, furious silence for several long seconds. He had never expected to meet somebody so foul outside of his own lineage. The sound of the water lapping the docks to his right was nearly drowned out by the roaring in his ears, but he managed to train his heart rate down from anything catastrophic before he turned to look at Remus. Sirius wasn't sure if he was expecting to see potent rage, tears, mortification; he supposed the blank iron curtain closing off the deeper sides of Remus now was just one of many possibilities—the outcome from a man who has had to deal with far too much in one lifetime and has gotten very good at putting up walls. 

"I would like to go home," Remus said softly, staring at the street where Alice had stood. Sirius decided after a flare of unease that he wouldn't pry until they were covered in the safety of privacy, where he could take the time he so clearly needed to coax a long twist of truths from Remus' deeper emotions. 

As they turned around to walk back to the central Floo station, as frayed and tense as the mooring on the water below them, Sirius tried desperately to shake the feeling of unsettled discomfort in his chest whenever he glanced over at Remus' stolid, deadened expression. Some distant and painful artery had been cleaved open by Alice's presence, and Sirius had no idea how to staunch it—or, if he was being brutally honest with himself, if it was even worth the grief. 

But brutal honesty was never an asset Sirius Black claimed to have. Quietly, nervously, he bodily kept his mind trained solely on the bland disappointment that a perfectly lovely visit to Wexford had been sullied.

What a bloody fucking shame.

—

The unsaid vote of their destination was Sirius' flat, closer to the station back at home and further from anything that could work alongside the exposed bone of Remus' raw memories and make him feel even worse. In through his front door, Sirius clicked on a single table lamp and stepped out of his shoes. He sank into the sofa with a long exhale of breath, hoping Remus would sit next to him, but his guts tightened when Remus only lowered himself stiffly into the single armchair off to the side. 

Sirius let the low, meditative hum of the refrigerator fill the space for several seconds before he sighed lightly."Are you alright?"

"No," Remus said starkly, like a splash of cold water to Sirius' expectation of cageyness that would have taken some wheedling before Remus might have responded. Sirius rifled through the layers and layers of questions in his mind before deciding to waylay careful stepping and cut directly to what his heart was aching to know, to hear, to heal.

"Did she treat you like that when you were together?" His feelings pulled with sickening sharpness when the expected, ensuing silence from Remus spoke volumes. 

"Probably. I only let myself see how bad it had gotten in the last couple months before she left," Remus finally said, voice weak, still staring at his knees. “But—I was willing to overlook it. 'Til she left me."

"Why did it get so bad? What caused it, or—or was she just good at hiding how horrible she is?" Sirius didn't want to keep prodding at an open wound like this, but he was so desperate to chase away this awful cloud that Alice's presence had belched into the air between them—the tar of it had stuck to Sirius' lungs like mustard gas. He couldn't, _wouldn't_ believe that Remus would have let himself be subjected to such awful emotional violence, would have let himself be married to it, all for what? Tradition? Expectation? Fear? These were the questions Sirius knew better than to ask now, but they were still shearing his resolve far too close to the skin for comfort. When Remus didn't respond again, retreated even further into the annals of dusty memories, Sirius clenched his jaw to hide the hurt and tried again.

"Remus," He said gently, leaving his voice open-ended for Remus to fill in as he might see fit. He kept his eyes trained on the sullen green eyes for any sign of faltering, any inch of give in this worrisome shut-down of his normal openness. When Remus drew a shaky breath to false-start once, Sirius held his own in unconsciously. 

"She found out about...my preferences. Not long after she left me. She never knew I liked men as well, apparently,” Remus said, his voice like cracking lumber that lanced into Sirius' heart with gnarled insistence. "She wasn't okay with it. Thought it...invalidated, _cheapened_ the idea of being with me. Somehow." A humorless cough of laughter; “Personally offended by my predisposition. She brayed it around to any part of the town that would listen. Moody’s was the only place where nobody…they wouldn’t believe her. Which hurt in its own way. It—I took the job here in large part because I needed to get _away_ from all of that. Start over.” It wasn't until now that Sirius had realized how fastidiously Remus was avoiding eye contact. Meeting his gaze at the last word was like looking into the epicenter of a forest fire, and Remus must have felt it too for the speed with which he looked back down to his fussing hands.

"But you're here now, you're away from all that," Sirius said, not even surprised at his own shakiness, almost as if he could feel the inevitability of disaster stirring up in the distance. _Life goes easy on me, most of the time..._

“I—" Remus bit his lip as he clearly reconsidered whatever phrase he was spinning, flipping through the rolodex of brilliant fucking words he could so easily weave into lyrics that made Sirius forget how to hate himself. "The confidence I have regarding...much of _this—“_ The shape of Remus' hand gesturing limply to the space between him and Sirius hurt in some strange, undefined way. “It takes a lot of effort from me."

"How do you mean?"

"I _mean,"_ those emerald eyes flaring suddenly, lip curling in a subtle snarl, flashpoint anger boiled up into Sirius' face too quickly like a bomb, "it isn't easy to be judged and thought of as less-than by people you used to love. We can't all have friends who accept us point-blank, Sirius."

Sirius felt a heavy, barreling wave of anger roll through him at that, a shard of his old adolescent fury quivering to life at the pit of his throat. _Not now, not FUCKING now, he’s dealt with enough tonight already—_ "What about Dorcas? And Xeno, and the Weasleys?"

"Save for Xeno, they only were alright with it _after_ the long and drawn-out fuckery of convincing them I wasn't just 'having some idle thoughts.’ Dorcas didn’t speak to me for a _month_ when she found out,” Remus spat. The patter of the sentence felt like a slap. "Do you know how _any_ of this feels?" 

"I've told you about my family, Remus, I know _exactly_ how this feels,” he replied with careful, highly-measured patience. _I will not shout at somebody I love, I will not be an example of my bloodline._

"Do you?" Remus shot back again, redoubled and poisonous, his glare aglow now like hot metal, inexplicably accusatory for something that wasn't Sirius' fault in the slightest, whatever it was that set this off so flagrantly. "Were _you_ wrapped up in a fucking mess of lying without even knowing it, rug pulled out from under you when you thought for _once_ you might be happy?!"

Sirius knew his wholly honest _Yes_ would have done more damage than anything. He swallowed his pride and kept his eyes as steady as possible, trying not to buckle with the emotional weight of Remus' outburst. "You were rattled by seeing her again, I get it, but—”

"I really don't think you fucking do!"

"Where the fuck is this coming from then?!" Sirius couldn't help back the raised voice, the clenching fists, the ramrod assertion of his spine as he fought to stay sitting, quell the Beast Of Black back down dormant in him— _fuck,_ the damage was already done, wasn’t it? It had been done the other morning, when Sirius couldn't keep his bloody words to himself, jarred the careful foundation of their relationship by ripping off the surface and trying to dive down too deep too quickly, scared the shit out of Remus, he _knew_ that pause had been loaded—

"You don't know me as well as you want to," Remus said with dangerous evenness. Sirius felt his insides pitch with a bitter scoff of his own that nearly took him by surprise as the first defense for feeling so deeply slighted.

"Does somebody saying 'I love you' really still taste so bad?" Sirius hissed. He could feel his mother's aspect rising up in him and hated the way his magic curled around the feeling like a caress at his core, like it had missed the burn of ire. He despised himself then more than he ever had before as he watched sorrow shudder behind Remus' fury. 

"You have no _idea_ how deep you're cutting," Remus said, his voice low, as he stood with a disgusted tension in his shoulders.

Sirius wanted to claw the words readied on his tongue back as he felt them formed, heard them rocket from his tongue like a curse;

"Then maybe you shouldn't have fucked me, Remus."

The sight of tears springing up along the rim of Remus' eyelashes kicked any remaining struts out from under Sirius' resolve, but he couldn't bring himself to speak again and break this choking silence rushing to fill every corner of the room. The world could have ended outside the flat and barely registered in comparison.

After several more seconds of stubborn disbelief mounting between the two men, Remus broke the tableaux to clench his jaw and wipe furiously at his eyes. 

"You were right earlier, outside the pub,” he said roughly. Not waiting for an interjection from Sirius, "I think I was going to say it tonight." When the ice-cold terror of loss dumped its way through Sirius' insides in the span of an empty, painful heartbeat, Remus took a moment to watch it happen before continuing. "But I don't believe either of us are the people we wanted to be just yet."

Before Remus completed his about-face to the door, Sirius could feel every repair meticulously sewn through the hallways of his heart over the last 3 months splinter apart and collapse into the festering vat of his guts. It turned him inside out, splaying his ribs apart like he was on an exam table, _Infarction indeed._ String him up from the ceiling on bits of wire and welded metal if one sees fit, but watching Remus shut the door to his flat without so much as a look over his shoulder was worse than a heart attack. This was the end of something beautiful. 

When Sirius felt his lungs finally spasm with the gasp of involuntary tears of his own, he already felt like he had watched a part of him die.

Again. 

—

**remus you don't have to respond but i'm so fucking sorry  
** **i would call if i could or i knew you would answer  
** **so at least this is here if you want it later, or delete it now, whatever works for you but i want to make sure you know i didn't want you to leave my flat without so much as a fucking word from me, i'm a ridiculous fucking coward, THAT much you're right about**

**i'm not going to take back what i said at yours that morning because i meant it  
** **but if you don't want to see me again i get it**

**if only for a couple months you made me feel like there was more to waking up than just dragging my fucking feet across the carpet  
** **and i'll always be grateful to you for that**

**get home safe  
** _Please stop messaging me, Sirius_

—

Hours later, the smell of carrion invaded sleep like the slow creep of smoke and the rasp of a raven shrieking on the headboard jolted Sirius awake. Disoriented for more than a couple deep breaths, he looked blindly around the inky dark of his room as stinking rot encircled him in a steady, choking embrace. 

"I can't see, Sirius."

Stunned and struck with terrified silence, Sirius followed Regulus' voice to sit up and look past the foot of the bed. Every instinct in his body screamed against him to shut his eyes, hide beneath his sheets, force himself back to sleep, but he was powerless to stop the searching adjustment of his pupils to the dark. When he could just barely make out the shape of the figure through the curtained light of his window, Regulus spoke again—his voice seemed to fill Sirius' brain to bursting, push at his seams, make his ears ring and strain for its volume all at once. 

"It's so cold here, too. I'm hungry, brother, and I—I can't see." The hitch of a sob clutched onto the end of his words, dredging up muddled memories of little Reggie as a boy crying over a game or a scraped knee. 

"Where are you?" Sirius asked, tongue dry, words scraping past his lips like rust. A flummox of feathers moved from behind Sirius, making him flinch, and alighted towards Regulus' silhouetted shape beside the window. In the meager light, Sirius could see the vague shadows and curious movements of three ravens perched on his brother's shoulders and head. 

"I don't _know,"_ Regulus wept, openly distressed, and took a step forward in the dark. Sirius couldn't see a single detail of him, but his body was shaking with grief. "Sirius, I can't see!" He bowed his face into his hands, and the raven on his head twitched its broad wings out for balance. 

"How can I help you, Reg?" Sirius asked, moving quickly to dig his wand out from his bedside table and crawl to the foot of the bed. Regulus cried with faint whimpers and sucks of breath, paining Sirius to his depths. Sirius’ hand shook where he gripped his wand.

"I'm lost," Reg moaned, echoed by a caw from the raven on his left shoulder. "I can't see anything, I'm so _cold..."_

"Here, I—have some light," Sirius said breathlessly, his pulse coming quick as he extended his wand and murmured a _Lumos_ into the dark. The watery blue light, thin but enough, faded up in its tight little radius to illuminate Regulus, standing hunched with his hands covering his face and still sobbing. The cast of the light lent him a grey pallor, reflecting wan and sorry on the funerary clothes he wore. He shied away from the brightness ever so slightly, animalistic, and Sirius' heart pulled in his chest. He so dearly missed even just seeing his little brother. ”Reg, it's okay, I want to help you."

"Help me, Siri," Regulus said immediately, wailing, his tears relentless enough to almost obfuscate his words. _"I can't SEE!"_

With that he tore his hands away from his face and rounded immediately on Sirius—but where a twinned pair of icy eyes should have met in sorrow, Regulus had only charred, bloody sockets. Broken and bruised around their edges, rotted down to the bone in places, Sirius felt his stomach lurch up in resistance as one of the ravens leaned in and picked off a chunk of skin to snap down in its beak. 

"It's so cold here," Regulus' corpse repeated, stepping now towards the bed, the horror of his shambling forcing Sirius to scramble backwards until he slammed into the headboard. Light exploded behind his eyes and he dropped his wand, throwing a grotesque shadow of Regulus and his ravens across the wall. "I'm all alone. I thought you would have given in and been here w _ith me by now," his voice hitching again on the height of another sob, reaching out toward Sirius with charred and broken fingers, his skin flaking off into ash as it neared him, the smell of death getting stronger, choking Sirius into silence and terror as the grip closed around his neck and—_

With the sort of scream that could tear vocal cords, Sirius threw himself into true consciousness in a chaos of sheets and sweat. He tore at the fabric wrapped around his torso, thrashing to free his arms and legs, bucking wildly against the mattress, and only stopped to suck in deep, rattling breaths when he could feel the air on his clammy skin as proof his brother hadn't risen from the grave to drag them both back down. 

Lying in ebbing panic, staring at the ceiling with wide and tearful eyes, Sirius wondered if this was back to being his new normal. If the loss of all his progress tonight signaled the end of what had only been a brief moratorium on his ever-present fear of the dead and unknown. As he covered his face with his hands to sob—heaving, full-bodied bawls that made his nose run and his throat hurt—Sirius tried to imagine facing this hell every single night again for the rest of his life. 

He knew down to the marrow of his bones that he wouldn't be able to keep it up for very long.


	9. Verse 9 - Elision

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Perhaps the only way to feel alright in the present is to visit the past, no matter how unkempt those halls might feel (or, Marlene MicKinnon runs an aesthetic blog).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Playlist for "9" is available at https://open.spotify.com/user/spontaneousness/playlist/7M9d9BUDdlIyYw0X9pHYNi

Awake. 

Inhale. 

Remember. 

...Cry. 

Sit up. 

Stare. 

Breathe. 

Notice the one panel on the venetian blind, bent at a strange angle, letting in a shaft of light. 

Stare some more. 

Hear the mobile buzz.

Twice.

Ignore the mobile. 

Stand up. 

Ignore the burn of existing. 

Walk. 

Sitting room. 

Denim shrugged over the sofa back, _He forgot his fucking jacket—_

Ignore the inferno of memory. 

_please stop messaging me, Sirius_

Ignore that riotous twist in the guts.

Walk again. 

Bathroom.

Twist faucet. 

Hot water's shit itself again. 

Stand in the shower like it will change at all, like it will change anything at all.

Cry, again. 

Let however-many fucking minutes pass. 

Shiver like the world has frozen over. _Sure as shit feels like it has._

Twist faucet.

Listen to the last of it gurgle away before moving even becomes a foggy option. 

Stare out the bathroom window, where the tree outside looks so bloody bland. Green isn't a color that should be seen right now. 

Towel. 

Walk. 

Bedroom. 

Look at mobile.

Hate the guilt in the throat that clenches at _3 missed calls - McKinnon_ and a barrage of unopened messages. 

Sit back on the bed. 

Swallow pride. 

Dial.

—

_"Well fucking good morning, Merlin corked, Sirius, what the hell? I've been calling you since 10, we were supposed to get breakfast, or are you too busy bent over a stack of books at Herr Doctor's place?"_

Sirius had staunchly opted for a plain voice call instead of video, not wanting to deal with the sisterly fuss over the mess he must look right now. He weathered her outpour with bleary attention before swallowing the lump in his throat. "Yeah, sorry," he said pitifully. The way the words scraped out of him must have struck something in Marlene, because the brief followup silence was deafening. 

_"Alright, what happened,"_ Marlene said gently. Sirius bit down hard on his resolve, but tears were springing up in his eyes before he could catch up with a way to explain them that wasn't the bald truth.

"Remus left," he managed to say before the hitch of his breath took over and he became a mess of fragmented words in his mind that he didn't feel like speaking. 

Marlene sighed like a little gust of wind, surprised and chagrined all at once. _"Oh, Siri, I’m—shit. I'm so sorry. Are you at your flat?"_

Sirius nodded before he remembered she couldn't see. Swiping the heel of his hand across his eyes with a deep sniffle, "Yeah."

_"I'm a minge. Stay there, leave the door unlocked, I'm Flooing over in ten minutes."_ Marlene's voice was matter-of-fact like nothing else in Sirius' brain was right now, so he wasn't about to refuse a dose of consistency amidst all this disrepair. 

"Okay," he said, drawing a shaky steadying breath. 

_"Ten minutes, I promise,"_ Marlene said quickly, followed on its heels with the click of the call disconnecting on her end.

Sirius laid himself back down on the unmade sheets, mobile still clutched idle in his left hand. Ten minutes dissolved into the void of apathy in no time, staring up at his ceiling with numb, directionless focus, to bring the clatter of Marlene opening the door to the flat with careful precision. 

"Hey," she called gently. 

"Here," Sirius croaked, not bothering to move.

Marlene's footsteps covered the middling distance between the entryway, heavy combat boots too severe for her image—but Sirius would never tell her that, her aesthetic was her everything—clumping mutely across the floor. She leaned into his sight line from a stand, perfectly-groomed brows slightly furrowed and bright-red lips pursed with concern. 

"I brought coffee," she said simply. "D'you want it in here or the sitting room?"

"Sitting room, I need to make myself sit up instead of fusing with my bed," Sirius said, still staring at the ceiling, “but—could you put the jacket on the sofa somewhere...not-out, shove it in the broom closet or something. Please."

Marlene was back into the sitting room without a word, and Sirius listened to the sound of her moving the denim-and-fleece that he was sure still smelled like Re _—stop this, stop fucking torturing yourself, Sirius—_ moving the jacket past the squeaking hinges of the front closet, shutting it solidly. Marlene walked back then to stand in the bedroom doorway. 

"I got cinnamon in yours," she said simply, "dark roast, 20 ounce."

"Bloody angel," Sirius replied, weary. He stood in a disjointed hang of limbs, exhausted beyond emotional measure, and took the proffered cardboard-and-plastic cup from Marlene gingerly. He led the way into the sitting room and sat slowly into the armchair, pointedly avoiding sending a looking glass burn of a stare over to the closet. Sirius sipped his coffee deeply despite its heat as Marlene folded herself onto the sofa to his right. 

"Do you want to talk it through? Detail anything to vent it?" Her voice was still sister-soft, and while Sirius appreciated it he shook his head.

"Still too raw, but thanks."

"No worries. I'm going to prattle on about my summer course then, if that's alright?"

Sirius clenched his jaw at the mention of academia that made his heart seize painfully, but he nodded nonetheless. 

"So I was supposed to take a side study in Numerology, remember? But admissions is full of twats so they got it all twisted up somehow..." Marlene's voice faded into the background of Sirius awareness as he looked at nothing, said nothing, felt almost nothing beyond the peach pit of loss sitting lodged just behind his sternum. He sipped steadily at his coffee until it was gone, the caffeine thrumming along mutely in his blood like a wheeze of pretend liveliness, making him feel twitchy but almost more uncomfortable than where he started upon waking. 

The door to his studio was ajar, and Sirius' mind wandered like radio static to its contents, the ravens, the wings and feathers made of ink and charcoal. Reg would have had two pieces done by now, probably planning the third, and the sudden and seizing need to be close to his brother crashed into Sirius like a semi. 

"...re you alright, Sirius? Shit, I shouldn't have said anything about my professor's arse, I'm sorry if I made you think of him—“

"How long has it been since I visited Regulus?" Sirius interrupted Marlene's frantic apology as he dragged himself back into reality. Marlene blinked and took a pensive sip of her latte. 

"Early March, if that," she said. Sirius uttered a low oath to himself and shifted in the armchair. "Do you want to go to the churchyard? I can go with if you want."

"Should I?" Sirius asked, looking her straight in the eye with the desperate confusion of loss. Marlene's eyes softened under his own and she sighed lightly, as if in another apology. 

"I think anything would be better than quarantining yourself in the last place you saw him," Marlene suggested plainly, and Sirius loved her twice over for her avoidance of Remus' name and the honesty he supposed he had called her for in the first place. 

Sirius drew a hand down his face in quiet, sloughing agony. The half-visible back of his easel seemed like a small child, peeking around the edge of the door to see if it's okay to come out of his bedroom now that mummy's stopped her raging. Sirius' guts gripped with aimless sympathy for some faceless past self. He supposed he was feeling sorry for himself on multiple levels, abstract as well as the more immediate concrete of implied rejection. 

"I should," he finally murmured. 

"Do you want me to come with?"

“I—no, thanks though. I think I have to so this one on my own. I'll just Apparate."

Marlene stood and smoothed her skirt, then took a step toward Sirius to smooth a flyaway lock of his hair as well. "Tell him hi for me," she said with a blue note of sadness. Sirius tended lately to forget how smitten she'd been with Reg as a teenager, all his brooding and emotional complexities wrapped up in the handsomely dark-featured package that was the more delicate, poetic stature between the two brothers. Regulus had ever been the more elegant son once he hit the growth spurt in year 4 that carried him a couple inches taller than Sirius. 

Sirius stood with a motion that made his knees protest. He had forgotten how grief made the joints ache. "Thanks for the coffee," he said through a deep stretch, "honestly. Means he world and a half."

"Any time, dogboy," Marlene replied, shouldering her bag and finishing the dregs of her own drink. "Want to come over later?"

Marlene's cozy studio flat would have made every feminine-minded student at Hogwarts and beyond weep with jealousy. It was impeccably decorated with adorable accents of furniture, baubles, and posters for her favorite current things, but it managed to remain charming and lovely instead of juvenile. Cream white, powder pink, and statement pieces in her ubiquitous shades of black and grey made up the decor, and while Sirius normally loved chatting or complaining over tea there with her about something inane in the days where nothing was going belly-up, he just truly wanted to be alone today. 

"Raincheck?" He asked, trying at a simple smile but only making it halfway on the corner of his mouth. Marlene patted him on the shoulder and kissed him feather-light on his cheek, which made Sirius' throat tug with emotion for what felt like the thousandth time. 

"Anything for you, Mary. Call if you need anything, okay?" Marlene had a foot out the door, and while Sirius more than anything wanted to say all he _needed_ was the return of the only person who'd made him feel any sort of warmth since he lost Reg, he knew it would have been childish to even try. 

"Ta," Sirius settled for saying, his voice reedy, waving lame and limply before Marlene's eyes flickered with pity as she pulled the door shut behind her. Sirius vented a sigh that could have toppled the Tower of London and sank back into the armchair, where he promptly descended into tears of self-pity for the fourth time in less than as many hours.

He was so tired of the people he cared about being clawed out of his life as soon as he finally felt like he was getting some emotional respite. 

This was going to take a hell of a lot of healing. 

—

London still smelled like fragments of childhood. 

After a couple more hours, another hot shower, and an internal pep talk that could have riled anyone worth their salt to at least step out and go to the bloody grocery store, Sirius found himself standing at the entrance of the tiny churchyard just outside the city proper where his family was and would be buried. 

Except for him. Being labeled a blood traitor from the age of 11 and then subsequently and unintentionally inheriting away the only thing that could have saved one's family from ruin and relative squalor tends to bar one's bones from eternal rest with great-great grand-père. 

All the summery field insects were still whirring along with the seasonal birds despite the clusters of tombstones stretching out before Sirius, some older than sin itself and crumbling more than faintly around their edges. This part of town had been warmed by the sun more than his walk in from the part of the area he remembered well enough to Apparate to, which made his skin prickle with heat a bit under the layer of his leather jacket. He couldn't quite find it in him to mind about discomfort right now. As Sirius took his beginning steps down the path of the rows—only organized to any sense of a pattern once the death dates started reaching the 1820s—the hiss of the grass beneath his feet sounded a bit too close to the sibilance of snakes to be any sort of consequence. He did his best to ignore it, forging on and trying not to crush the small bouquet in his fist in the process of girding his will. 

Finally cresting a tiny knoll that was distantly familiar with a dull throb in his heart, Sirius found himself crossing by headstones belonging to kin he had actually known in their lifetime. Just before a reaching a little clearing and inwardly thanking every possibility of power beyond that nobody else in the family picked today to visit the grave as well, Sirius saw the polished marker for Regulus Arcturus Black standing sentinel over the unfortunately unoccupied plots reserved for his parents. 

It took 5 minutes of standing there, free hand stuffed in his pocket, listening to the stillness of the nature around the churchyard before Sirius could make his tongue remember how to form words.

"Hey, Reggie," he finally said. He let the three syllables hang in the air for a bit, almost as if his unconscious expected the black granite in front of him to respond. “I—shit. Hi. You liked lavender, I remembered that much." Sirius leaned forward to lay down the sprigs of fragrant purple spears, picked from a bush outside the churchyard in an embarrassed afterthought. He was careful not to let his feet touch the invisible outline of where he remembered the hole for the coffin to be beneath the grass when something in him still recoiled at the undead nightmare from last night. Righting himself again and doing his best to quiet the racketing stiffness inside him, Sirius tried not to grind his teeth too violently at the obvious omission of _Brother_ from the epitaph of _Son - Heir - Wizard - Tujours Pur._

"I'm a bloody mess," Sirius said with withered resignation. He lowered himself to the grass to sit cross-legged, forcing himself to swallow his residual nerves and look plainly at the carved marble raven perched like a watchman over whatever sort of afterlife Regulus had earned for himself. "So I'm going to talk to a rock to make sense of it all. Cheers."

As he launched into a disjointed string of apologies, fears, and general grievances against the universe, more tears and all, the bit about Regulus not actually being alive to reply in any way soon became comforting instead of awkward. After almost 6 months of Keeping It All In—save for one rogue "I love you" that still made the backs of his eyes burn to remember—Sirius gradually realized that vomiting it all onto the passive ghost of his brother was, surprisingly, a consolation.

Concentrating on rehashing the leaps and blunders he'd made to build the life he had cobbled together up to this point made it easier to ignore the fact that his heart was presently ragged and rent to pieces. 

There were many ways to grieve. 

There _are_ many ways to grieve. 

—

My name is Remus Lupin and I’m a complete bastard.

I feel like I’ve emptied myself from the inside out all over again, and I guess I had forgotten how close that feels to dying. I know I have a penchant for being dramatic. But at least I actually know what all of that really feels like. Hear me out.  
  
I was bitten by a werewolf when I was 6—I never turned, because modern Healing is a fucking blessing. I remember how much it burned though; hours and hours of endless fire, and probably worse than Cruciatus, lancing my side like the end of the world for so long I forgot how to cry about it after the first day in hospital. I survived. I thought I was invincible after then, until Alice left me. And nothing, not even months of near-death recovery—twice, because I almost overdosed when I found out she married Frank, I know, hold the lecture, it’s why I still don’t even touch cold medicine—has measured up to the last four days of absolute desolation.  
  
I feel like I’ve torn out two hearts at once, and I don’t know how I ever let myself fall this far.  
  
I shouldn’t have exploded like I did. It wasn’t his fault we ran into her, the universe just fucking despises me. He didn’t do anything wrong. I couldn’t breathe when it was happening though. All those old, rotten feelings rolling up from hell all over again and bathing me in the worst sort of brimstone, I can’t believe that sordid bitch still makes me so angry. I know I shouldn’t have tried to sweep all that bullshit about her outing me under the rug from the outset. I played far too many cards far too close to the chest. It was so fucking stupid, _I’m_ so fucking stupid. It was irrational and horrible and I wish I could apologize, but I am nothing if not stubborn. My father would be proud, until he would just as quickly hate me for falling in with a man.  
  
So I’m doing this all over again with a fifth of Firewhiskey and a whole battery of shitty lyrics flying straight out of my guts and into the bin. Writing about boxes and shitty people and being angry and fucking _fuck_ all of this. None of it is good. This is the worst, rawest kind of therapy but it’s the only kind I’m willing to deal with anymore. Sirius always said I was so calm, so level, so fucking good for him, and look where those goddamn inner tendencies landed me. I got mad at him for not knowing me when I barely know myself. I can’t even pretend to be peaceful anymore because it hurts so badly it exhausts me. How could I have even gotten so angry when I’m the one who keeps secrets like they’re my fucking lifeblood? My magic is even weaker right now than it was after Alice left. I’m a disaster.  
  
I want to hurl my guitar off of this rooftop. I don’t even technically have roof access but I can climb out here to sit through the window by my bed and I can’t stand being between four walls of anything right now. Sometimes I think maybe there are residuals in my blood from the werewolf bite, because the moon is almost full and I want to destroy things. This has happened before. I’ve never carried anything out. I wonder if I’ve been cut far enough to the quick right now to actually hurt something besides myself. There are neighbors beyond the back garden though, and they would be startled, and I would rather not have a whole fucking parade of Ministry officials banging on my door (or my window) to question my sorry excuse for destruction. My students are going to think somebody died when I have to pull myself together on Monday. If I can even get the fuck out of bed.  
  
I’m a terrible inconvenience to everybody I’ve ever fallen in love with. Because I really do, I love him, and I’ll never get to tell him now. He’ll never take me back, I’ve made a fucking disgrace of myself. Sirius made me feel safe and brilliant, and in return I made him feel like ashes. Christ, it makes me cry all over again to think about it. I feel sick. I feel like death risen up and charred twice over.  
  
My mother told me last year that one has to have their heart truly broken for the first time before one can learn How They Love. I thought that was Alice for me. I thought Sirius might have been my reward, my single fucking blessing for learning how my bloody, bleeding heart works. Instead he’s the break.  
  
I can’t fix this.  
  
I can never, ever fix this.


	10. Verse 10 - Recapitulation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And yet somehow, this feels like home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Playlist for "9" is available at https://open.spotify.com/user/spontaneousness/playlist/7M9d9BUDdlIyYw0X9pHYNi

_20 July @ Phoenix Tail_

_Greatest Bastard  
_ _Trusty & True  
_ _Colour Me In_

_and if he isn’t there just fucking go home because it won’t be worth it_

_—_

By all counts, Sirius Black had always felt emotional pain far deeply than physical. 

So of course, a week after waking up to the fresh hell of loneliness was the perfect time to sally up and get a tattoo. 

The artist had been accommodating and, to Sirius’ admitted surprise, really very impressed with the sketch Sirius had brought with him. It was nearly two hours later and his left shoulder was beginning to creak in its joint from being extended on the chair’s arm since he sat down. Sirius had tried his best to avoided looking at the needle making its slow progression through the large black wing wrapping its way elegantly around his forearm in flight, but something about the rapid and exacting punch of the machine was morbidly fascinating to watch. It hurt far less than anguish; even muted it a bit. 

Sirius had debated with himself for several hours, sat on the floor of his studio surrounded by sheafs of illustrations, on where to _put_ the damn thing. Once he figured out the design he had charmed a temporary outline onto all different parts of his body and, shirtless and twisting ridiculously in the full-length mirror to see each offering from various angles, went through lots of changes of mind before staunchly deciding on the arm. Now, the intermittent buzz of the tattoo gun was fascinating to the part of Sirius’ brain entranced by Muggle machinery, and surprising with the tingling strangeness of its unique pain when it skated over his elbow or the inner pad of his forearm hinge. 

“And there you are,” the tattooist finally said, wiping one last sweep of a paper towel over Sirius’ skin, his lopsided smile creasing the design on his face that came down from his temple to paint one side of his jaw with a watercolor-looking pattern, “one wing for you. The offer still stands, I can discount the second one on the right and you can try and fly, eh?”

Sirius laughed at the offer, a rehearsed motion through his throat that tasted sharply of performance. He bit back the tease about some sort of broomstick, because this wasn’t a wizarding shop. He let the false laugh ring a bit louder then, because the tattooist was decidedly attractive in the way a bit of barbed wire makes one’s finger itch to touch it and see if it might draw blood. But _Hair’s too dark, stature’s all wrong, not your type, not your type at all—_ Sirius’ chuckle trailed off into a light sigh as he twisted his shoulder to flex off the stiffness and examined the fresh ink on his arm. There, permanent on the pale canvas of his skin, the curve of the fresh piece was all at once far more alluring that any run-of-the-mill man could be; his shit brain was right. He was never any good at rebounding. 

“Maybe give it another couple of months,” Sirius replied with his best attempt at geniality, drawing out his wallet to pay with fresh bills of Muggle money, “might figure out how to make this one work on its own.”

—

“‘Ve you been back to Albus’?” James drawled, the bass of his voice humming faintly against the carpet through his back. Sprawled on the floor and staring up at the ceiling with their heads touching, like they used to as teenagers in the dormitories on weekends, drunk as blazes, he and Sirius were taking up the majority of the space in James’ sitting room. Lily was away visiting family, where James was patently unwelcome, so Sirius had seized the chance to mope down to the bottom of an urn of Hollymeadow Mead with him. Doing it alone had gotten boring. 

“Fuck no,” Sirius spat, vaguely surprised at the venom in the words. “I’m not a masochist.”

“‘Ve you messaged him since?”

“No.”

“How d’you know if he’s still angry then?”

“You weren’t there, James,” Sirius growled, annoyed at the vise that still clamped around his heart whenever he thought about the argument almost 2 weeks ago. “He’s completely done with me.”

“I find that hard to believe,” James said through a heavy sigh. The glugging slosh of liquid in a mostly-empty jug sounded as he knocked back a thick sip. “If the way he looked at you here at dinner was to be believed, you hang the fuckin’ moon for him. Have a haaaaard time thinking he’d sod off so easy.”

“He said it’s hard for him to like blokes,” Sirius replied with stark candor. His throat was dry, so he charmed the mead over to his side with a flippant swish of his wand. He swallowed a bit of the final few gulps left in it through James’ patient silence. “If he likes girls better, he’s probably found one already.” The burn that lit in his lungs at that idea was shocking and painful. 

“Bullshit,” James said simply. 

“And what the fuck do you know about navigating your sexuality, Potter?”

“I meant ‘bullshit’ about him finding somebody different in a week, you clod,” James clarified with exasperated tenderness. “‘e’s a bloody professor. Doesn’t have time to dally around with people between his summer schedule.”

“Trust me, it would be easy. He’s a charming bastard, you know that,” Sirius mumbled. 

“‘Re you _trying_ to make yourself more miserable?” 

James’ voice, thickened with drink, still carried all the intensity of the furrowed stare Sirius knew he was directing to the blankness of the ceiling. They both meditated on the whispered ticking of the grandfather clock by the hearth for several seconds before Sirius groaned with defeat. 

“This Sunday,” he said softly, nearly to himself, “I could could go. He has a normal set there. _Had,_ or, I dunno. Might be able to...apologize. Or something.”

“What d’you have to apologize for? Wasn’t he the one that brought up the problem?” James sounded somewhat irritated, and Sirius tried to train down the residual bolt of protective anger that surged in him at that. 

“I said some pretty shitty shit as well, James. Neither of us’re blameless.”

“So both of you need to apologize.”

“...Yeah.”

“Which is a thing you’re fuckin’ awful at, sorry.”

“Thanks. Loads.”

“It’s the truth! Just tryin’ to help.” James loosed a windy sigh and the carpet whispered against his hair as he presumably shook his head to himself. “You should go then. See if he, I dunno, plays any sappy stuff and says sorry first. ‘S far as I’m concerned he’s still mostly in the wrong. Springing that on you, all _after_ you meet his mum.”

Sirius stayed quiet, because James was right. Sirius was exceedingly good at blaming himself for everything that ever went wrong in his life, but that didn’t mean it was all entirely his fault. He finished off the mead before transfiguring the empty jug into a glass sculpture of his hand making a V sign and passing it over his head to James. 

“My gift to you, O Esteemed Sir,” he announced with false pomp. James snorted and broke into giggles as he took the little creation and set it down beside him. 

“Fuck, mate,” he said through the tail of his laughter, “you’re gonna be fine.”

“Yeah,” Sirius said coolly, folding his hands on his chest and closing his eyes to try and still the pace of his heart. “Hope you’re right.”

—

Sunday came too quickly. Saturday fucked right off in a haze of preemptive worry, and Sirius was ready to jump out of his own skin as he paced the short width of the sitting room just outside his studio door as if his heels were on fire come early Sunday afternoon.

_He might not even be there._

_But wouldn’t that be worse?_

_Talk to Albus about it._

_No, don’t bother him with it._

_Then message Remus._

_FUCK no._

_If he isn’t there, it isn’t worth going in the first place._

_Get yourself together, at the very least Albus will know you aren’t fucking dead. You owe the man that much._

_Just message Remus._

_Fucking—_

“Fine,” Sirius finally said aloud, the growl at himself rumbling like basalt just behind his sternum. He ripped his mobile from his pocket, leaning against the wall with his pulse humming catastrophic beneath his skin. His thumbs moved quickly through the once-automatic pattern of queueing up a new message to Remus’ number, and they quivered slightly as the white static in his brain kept him from thinking of anything to say for several long seconds. This culmination of nearly 2 weeks of silence felt exceedingly strange.

**hi  
** **i’m going to the phoenix to check in with albus this evening**

**have you been alright?**

Sirius clenched his back teeth, flexing his jaw as he waited for any sign that Remus had seen his message or was responding in any way. A full minute passed before he huffed an angry scoff at his own pitiful try at reaching out, so he jammed the mobile back into his pocket—right as it buzzed shortly. Sirius stole a moment to swallow the font of adrenaline that spurred in his belly before making himself look at the screen again. 

_Less than fine, but not dead.  
_ _I’ve a set tonight, you sure you want to be there?_

The twinned flare of relief and fury lit through Sirius’ bones like a bursting spell. He typed his response furiously, automatically, almost jostling the little phone from his hands with the hammering of his fingers, his body still leant rigid against the wall as if trying to huddle in from a storm. 

**if i didn’t want to hear a set i would have stopped in yesterday instead  
** **i know it sounds stupid but i’m actually really sick of pretending i’m not worried about you**

Sirius stared at the send message, mind mute, terror ringing vaguely through his lungs at the stripped truth he hadn’t meant to let fly like that. The text reticule blinked at him, mocking, waiting for more spillage. Remus’ status jumped twice, three times, in and out of typing standby. Sirius’ heart tugged with it each time in nauseating anxiety. 

_Like I said, not dead._

_I’m playing at the regular time, catch as much or as little as you want._

**ta then, see you**

_Cheers, Sirius_

There was a clinical undertone in Remus’ messages that sat metallic on Sirius’ tongue, but he figured it was just his own fault for reading to deeply into the textual voice he hadn’t heard in his mind’s ear in far too long. He found, unsurprised, that he missed the signature of an intimate little _“x”_ at the end of Remus’ farewell message. He tried not to seethe too badly at himself for feeling that absence so fondly.

Sirius slaughtered the next three hours with a hurricane of charcoal abstraction that, stepping back to look at it in totality, made his innards feel more obfuscated than when he had started in on the blank sheet of paper in the first place. Through the whorls of foreign shape language he could divine out something shaped like a shoulder, maybe the edge of a profile twisted in agonized song lit with a vicious streetlamp beside the bay. _Whatever._ Art be damned. It was time to go. 

Hands washed, face scrubbed of black smudges, hair tied back, Sirius was almost one toe out the door before he stopped with the aimless thought of _His jacket’s still here._ Sirius stole a harrowing moment of deliberation before huffing a swift surrender to his stupid savior tendencies and wrenching open the front closet. Marlene, bless her, had folded the jacket neatly and tucked it up onto the highest shelf she could reach. Pulling it down, intent on being nonchalant and just barreling out the door with it, Sirius was arrested by the texture his fingers knew like code. With a violent pull, he realized it still smelled of Remus. 

“Don’t you _dare,”_ he insisted to himself under his breath, intent on _not_ inhaling a lung-full of the scent like ambrosia as he rucked the jacket up under his arm and jettisoned from his flat with a slam of the door and singular purpose. Down the stairs, into the Floo, through the flames like flaring green underbrush, and into the familiar dull roar of The Phoenix Tail—Sirius hoped the swiftness would keep his instinct to run far away from this inevitability away for at least long enough to catch a glimpse of Remus. 

Fourteen days had started to feel like a fucking lifetime.

—

Albus’ pour upon ordering was deep and welcome, eyeing Sirius pointedly over his spectacles. 

“You know it’s a Sunday, don’t you?”

“I know.” The words sheared every sinew in Sirius’ neck to exhume them as he continued; “Has he been alright the past few?”

Albus sighed lightly, the unannounced “he” meaning a fucking encyclopedia between the two of them. “He didn’t show Sunday before last, but he played a long set a week ago—“ Sirius did his best to quell violent panic, quickly followed by uneasy relief. “Moved half the pub to tears.”

Sirius tried to ignore the firestorm that lit up in his stomach at that as Albus moved to dry a glass and shook his head shortly to himself. “I won’t ask. But it’s good you’re here this time.”

“We fucked it all up, Albus,” Sirius murmured halfway to himself. 

“I know. Here’s hoping you can fix it.” The double of Dragon Barrel that he pushed closer in invitation in front of Sirius was christened without further prodding.

“Can you tell if he’s—honestly, truly alright?” Sirius finally forced himself to ask. Albus paused for a moment before another sigh passed through him slowly, inaudibly. 

“Have you reached out to him recently?” he asked gently. Sirius waited to respond until a burst of laughter from a table behind him died away. 

“A little bit, this afternoon. He knows I’ll be here.”

A glint of something that looked almost like unexpected relief sparked in the blue of Albus’ eyes before he responded; “He talked to me last week before and after he played. Drank me nearly out of Firewhiskey. He’s been hurting.”

“Fucking hell, Rem, it’s a two way street,” Sirius muttered automatically to himself without meaning to, drowning the realization of its utterance with a stiff sip of his drink. 

“But he’s stronger than he looks. Again—I think it’s good you’re here, Sirius,” Albus said in finality. Before Sirius could ask for clarification, the older wizard was off to the opposite end of the bar. Something in the angle of his attention meant he had said all he was willing to air to Sirius. With a shadowed sigh, Sirius hunkered in with a jacket that didn’t belong to him bunched up on his knees to wait for the performance that would surely crack his foundations into dust. 

Twenty minutes later, without any sort of warning from the Floo flaring or the manifestation of nerve-addled imaginings of Remus coming up to the bar for a drink, the pub lights suddenly dimmed. Sirius’ heart leapt into his throat— _he probably Apparated in, didn’t want to cross paths, fuck. I shouldn’t be here._ Intently averting his eyes from the stage down at his hands, one around his glass and the other knotted up in the fabric of Remus’ orphaned jacket, Sirius weighed the merits of making an escape before the music got underway as he processed the fact he wasn’t ready to see Remus again.

“Hallo there, back to interrupt your regularly scheduled Sunday night again.”

The words came from the stage like a wraith of older memories, and Sirius was suddenly struck to his spot like smelted steel. He still couldn’t bring himself to look up at the stage but as emotion shuddered through him in the middling tones of Remus’ voice, he knew it would be impossible to leave now.

“I’ve, ah, been in a way, for a little while. Sorry for last week.”

A patron clearly a couple draughts deep called out _“‘S more’n alright, mate!”_ to usher in a hum of chuckles from the pub limned with a bit of shushing. Remus’ own short lick of laughter shot through Sirius’ veins like a drug. _Do not look at the stage, do not look up at him, you’ll rattle to pieces here on the floor—_

“Cheers,” Remus said genuinely. A couple light plucks of tuning strings came from him, tweaking, before he continued. “So, I...owe somebody an apology.”—Sirius’ heart surged with terrified hope—“I don’t know if he really, ah, wants to hear it right now, but—I know he’s sick of worrying. So I hope this suffices.”

Sirius bit down hard on the urge to flee as his cheeks burned red and his emotions went haywire. Nobody would know “somebody” was him besides Albus unless they were terribly astute and could catch the scent of sudden anxiety like a hound, but Sirius still wanted to sink into the floor. The music started, a steady and even introduction of softness, and he willed his nerves to stay intact as Remus began to sing. 

_“I made you laugh, I made you cry,  
_ _I made you open up your eyes,  
_ _Didn't I?_

_I helped you open out your wings,  
_ _your legs, and many other things,  
_ _Didn't I?_

_Am I the greatest bastard that you know?  
_ _The only one who let you go?  
_ _The one you hurt so much you cannot bear?_

_Well we were good when we were good,  
_ _When we were not misunderstood;_

_You helped me love, you helped me live,  
_ _You helped me learn how to forgive,  
_ _Didn't you?_

_I wish that I could say the same  
_ _But when you left, you left the blame,  
_ _Didn't you?_

_Am I the greatest bastard that you met?  
_ _The only one you can't forget?  
_ _Am I the one your truth's been waiting for?_

_Or am I just dreaming once again?  
_ _Some dreams are better when they end;_

_Some make it, mistake it,  
_ _Some force and some will fake it;  
_ _I never meant to let you down.  
_ _Some fret it, forget it,  
_ _Some ruin and some regret it;  
_ _I never meant to let you down.”_

Sirius’ throat clenched gradually into a ball of barbed wire as he absorbed Remus’ words. It was so fucking painful to hear every twist of meaning behind each line, the setting against a tune that said _I know we’re both wrong but I want to fix this._ Sirius hadn’t prepared for this. He had been ready to listen, but he certainly hadn’t been ready to understand. 

_“We learned to wag and tuck our tails,  
_ _We learned to win and then to fail,  
_ _Didn't we?_

_We learn that lovers love to sing  
_ _And that losers love to cling,  
_ _Didn't we?_

_Am I the greatest bastard that you know?  
_ _When will we learn to let this go?  
_ _We fought so much, we've broken all the charm_

_But letting go is not the same  
_ _As pushing someone else away;_

_So please don't let on  
_ _You don't know me,  
_ _Please don't let on  
_ _I'm not here;  
_ _Please don't let on  
_ _You don't love me,  
_ _'Cause I know you do,  
_ _I know—“_

Sirius could hear Remus’ voice beginning to break around its edges, and suddenly it was a civil war against his will power to keep his stare trained on his tensed, worried hands. _Don’t look at him, don’t fucking look at him, you’ll break right here, you—_ but Sirius’ thought process stuttered across his sweetest errant memory from early April and _Christ, Sirius, won’t you look at me,_ the whisper in the alleyway that had seen Sirius into a surge of happiness that felt so distant these days, crashing into his mind alongside the cadence of Remus’ perfectly raw performance before him, raising the pulse of every tremor in his fractured heart to a crescendo that crested in the very subtle but utterly meaningful action of Sirius

looking

_up._

And there on the stage plain as day, _Oh, well then, it’s been you all along,_ was the Eden he had denied himself for a fortnight, Remus looking straight at him to rewrite the meaning of Emerald Green and fill him with hope for tomorrow for the first time in several long and lonely nights. 

_“Some make it, mistake it,  
_ _Some force and some will fake it;  
_ _I never meant to let you down.  
_ _Some fret it, forget it,  
_ _Some ruin and some regret it;  
_ _I never meant to let you down,  
_ _I never meant to let you—  
_ _I never meant to let you down,  
_ _I never meant…”_

Sirius managed to get a grip on his emotions enough to not cry in public, but his heart was hammering with a mix of adrenal thrill and love. If nothing else, he was more than sure now that he absolutely loved Remus all the way to outer planets, from pieces to pieces and back again. As the song closed and the audience broke into pleased applause with a few whistles and vocal cheers for good measure, Sirius felt the silvery thread of connection weaving its way back between himself and Remus

Nothing had ever felt more like coming home. 

As Sirius watched, slightly rapt and completely content and wholly filled with confusing nerves and jitters, Remus played through another new song with fresh gusto. The slight wisp of hesitation from the first gorgeous offering was gone now, replaced with a willingness to finally smile and even bring the rowdier edges of the audience in to sing along with him. 

_“...Come, come alone,  
_ _Come with fear, come with love,  
_ _Come however you are,_

_Just come, come alone,  
_ _Come with friends, come with foes,  
_ _Come however you are,_

_Just come, come alone,  
_ _Come with me, then let go,  
_ _Come however you are,_

_Just come, come alone,  
_ _Come so carefully closed,  
_ _Come however you are,_

_Just come, come along,  
_ _Come with sorrows and songs,  
_ _Come however you are,_

_Just come, come along,  
_ _Come let yourself be wrong,  
_ _Come however you are,  
_ _Just come.”_

Sirius didn’t quite have it in him to add his voice to the fray, but it was lovely to listen to. Slightly off-key but warmer than mulled wine, feeling oddly autumnal in this apex of summer, Sirius let the joyful thrum of it carry on in the margins of his singular attention on Remus, Remus, _Remus._ More cheers capped off the song as Remus dove into a broad strum of finality after mock-conducting a few phrases of the chorus with the pick between his fingers. 

“Ahh, this is my favorite pub,” Remus said as the applause died down. A few whoops of assent rose up at that, and Remus’ answering chuckle was unfettered. Sirius drank it in like antidote for every ounce of poison in his blasted system. Remus set to retuning his guitar with subtle grace, glancing up at Sirius once with a jot of affection that bolted itself to Sirius’ core in loving permanence. 

“Now that would be a wonderful place to stop,” Remus continued, “but I’ve got just a bit more to say. One more, eh?” The drunk fellow from the start of the set called _“‘A course!”_ and Remus couldn’t hold back another helpless laugh as he finished setting his instrument. Sirius couldn’t help smiling along with it. 

“Cheers, you all are wonderful. Here’s to returning.” He stilled himself with a second of closed eyes as silence fell over the crowd, and then with a gentle flow of finger-picking Remus started in on another new song. 

_“I tried to repress it, then I carried its crown.  
_ _I reached out to undress it and love let me down;  
_ _Love let me down._

_So I tried to erase it, but the ink bled right through;  
_ _Almost drove myself crazy when these words led to you,  
_ _And all these useless dreams of living alone  
_ _Like a dogless bone—_

_So come let me love you.  
_ _Come let me love you and then  
_ _Color me in._

_Well, I tried to control it and cover it up.  
_ _I reached out to console it,  
_ _It was never enough;  
_ _Never enough._

_So I tried to forget it, that was part of the show.  
_ _Told myself I'd regret it, but what do I know  
_ _About all these useless dreams of living alone  
_ _Like a dogless bone?_

_So come let me love you.  
_ _Come let me love you and then  
_ _Color me in._

_Come let me love you,  
_ _Come let me take this through the end  
_ _Of all these useless dreams of living in all these useless dreams,  
_ _All these useless dreams of living in all these old noes!_

_Come let me love you;  
_ _Come let me love you;  
_ _Come let me love you,  
_ _Come let me.”_

Hell and wrath, there it was. Remus had never returned the I Love You because that was never his language, _this_ was the only way he could ever summarize and communicate the encoded annals of love and all that came with it. The realization flowed through Sirius with frothing, churning waves of understanding, and if a rivulet of those waves found its way to the inner corner of his left eye, the quick swipe of his finger and a short sniff to dispel the clutch of further spilling emotion were the only witnesses.

It was, in a word, perfect. 

Sirius hardly heard the audience mark the end of the song, so intent was his watch on the way Remus carried himself through the contour of the song. It was selfish, but it was so clearly for him that it was his new favorite. The way Remus had looked at him periodically as he sang through the tune was all the unsaid surety Sirius would need for a long, long time. 

The lights came back up and brought with them a fresh layer of nerves to Sirius’ frayed insides. Remus had busied himself with tidying away his case and straightening the stage, and Sirius was suddenly very aware of the fact that, as lovely as the healing layer of Remus’ music was, they would still have to talk. He needed a cigarette. 

Hailing Albus with a tip of his empty glass, Sirius leaned slightly over the edge of the bar with excited unease swimming around behind his eyes. 

“If he comes looking for me I’ve gone out for a smoke and would like for him to join,” he said softly with a tongue that felt of sandpaper. Albus only smiled that knowing little grin, and nodded, taking the glass and turning to rinse it clean. 

Sirius stood with steady ease, conscious of keeping his bones in check to avoid rattling out of his skin. He steadfastly avoided a glance toward the stage as he weaved through the tables and only let himself breathe when he pushed open the alleyway door to suck in a dose of warm outside air. Alone with the sounds of evening and pale orange light of a fading sunset over the alley walls, Sirius lit a cigarette swiftly with his thumb and leaned back against the familiar grit of the wall to wait.

Patience was far from his favorite virtue, but Sirius could weather it every once and while. That had been the greatest change, he thought distantly, through all of this, all of the meandering changes to the way he existed since the mired and sodden depression of losing Regulus; he was finally willing to give himself _time._ With a flutter of his heart, an errant scrap of memory recalled a lyric of Remus’ from months ago— _Pass me by, I’ll be fine, just give me time._ Blowing a gauzy plume of smoke up into the sky, Sirius silently thanked whatever shred of his ancestry had finally decided to cut him a break in this whirlwind of existence and return to him the man who had finally made it all make sense. 

As if on cue, the alley door scraped open and Sirius still couldn’t make himself look over at the certainty of Remus. If he looked, it wasn’t a dream. If he looked, he would have to get answers he wasn’t sure he wanted. If he looked, Remus would look back and Sirius didn’t trust his resolve to keep him upright for much longer. If he looked—

The alley door scraped open and wiped Sirius’ mind clean like a burst of ashes. There was a column of flames boiling Sirius’ insides from belly to throat, but he did his best to ignore it and watched instead the gauzy blink of the stars with nervous, purposeful eyes. He heard the soft grit of Remus leaning against the wall beside him, closing his eyes briefly at the shock of affection the smell of loose tobacco igniting caused inside him. Sirius steeled himself and turned to his right to look full into green eyes like Spanish moss limned with quiet electricity, lit from below by the glow of a cigarette held in a gentle, blunt-nailed hand.  
  
“Hallo,” Remus said softly, “isn’t coincidence finally on our side again?”  
  
“How long have you been playing those songs?” Sirius asked, automatic and slightly breathless. The sound of the alley had faded to a dull haze of noise—all that existed was Remus. All that had ever meant anything at all was Remus.  
  
“This was the first time. I hid in my flat two Sundays ago trying to forget how to exist, but if I didn’t play in front of people soon I was liable to implode. Last weekend was…a very different set. I was wondering if you would—I was hoping. You’d be here tonight,” Remus replied. His hand found Sirius’ and squeezed it softly, warm and solid and real. “I’m so sorry. I’ve been awful. And really fucking scared.”  
  
“You really hurt me,” Sirius whispered, dragging his thumb across the back of Remus’ hand and reveling silently in the tenderness that felt like soothing ice on a burn. He was surprised he could find breath to draw right now. “You were so angry, Remus, and I assumed the worst when you wouldn’t reply but it’s my fault too—“  
  
“But more mine. I blamed you for what I couldn’t process. I clearly still had a lot of shit to work out. Still have, I suppose.” Remus drew deeply on his cigarette and knit his fingers softly into Sirius’.  
  
“Well I hate to break it to you, but I’ve had a lot of shit to work out since the day we met.” Sirius heart pulled ardently at Remus’ low, good-natured chuckle, the first sign of levity in such a long, long time. “Life is confusing and—and fucking terrible by turns. But you made it a hell of a lot better. That’s mostly why that row hurt so badly—“ Remus apologized again without words by pressing a kiss to Sirius’ knuckles; Sirius stroked Remus’ bottom lip slowly with his thumb in acceptance. “It’s alright. I did a lot of repairing in two weeks. You didn’t take it completely to the bone, Lupin.”  
  
“Felt like I did,” Remus whispered.  
  
“Still standing though,” Sirius replied.  
  
“I’ve never been good at apologizing and I feel terrible about it,” Remus said, almost to himself. Sirius brushed a twist of curls off to the side of his forehead and met his eyes. Merlin, his hair grows quickly.  
  
“This is a good start,” Sirius said gently. “You’ll get the hang of it soon. You’re a quick study.”  
  
Remus’ responding smile was a disarming jot of cleansing ease. When he kissed Sirius, full and gentle and welcoming home, it was like the reemergence of the sun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a couple more loose ends to tie up, and away we go :) Thank you so much for being along for this ride, I hope the incoming epilogue makes you smile <3


	11. Verse 11 - Coda

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ...and just as gracefully as they entered, the boys take their bows. x

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Playlist for "9" is available at https://open.spotify.com/user/spontaneousness/playlist/7M9d9BUDdlIyYw0X9pHYNi

Eight months later, the sharp wind of early March finally brought Lily and James’ wedding into raucous reality. Lakeside just outside of town, a network of charmed tents sprawling across a newly-sprouted field, the sun had just begun to set and the dancing was starting in earnest. 

The main tent was aglow with floating lanterns and high, scarlet ceilings to hold in all their light and laughter. A hardwood floor was installed before a simple raised stage, where Lily had eagerly hired Dorcas’ string quartet and their seemingly endless list of repertoire to play for the reception. The joy was infectious, and everyone could feel it. 

“If you trip over my instep again you buy breakfast next week,” Marlene warned her date as she dragged him to the center of the floor when a rendition of a pop song revved up onstage. The man was a terribly dashing red-haired wizard she’d been seeing in fits and starts and finally a steady hum of regularity about three months ago; he would have seemed mysterious and intimidating next to anybody besides Marlene. It was clear she wore the trousers—it was even clearer he adored that fact.

“She’s going to eat him alive,” Remus muttered, his eyes alight with jest as he tipped his chin toward the handsome couple moving well to the rhythm. Sirius snorted. 

“Apparently power struggles are their version of foreplay,” he replied. “I hardly understand heterosexuals sometimes.”

Remus laughed, his head thrown back slightly as he always did when he was particularly happy. He was doing a lot of that these days. It made Sirius’ mended heart soar. Keeping the pleased gaze trained on Remus, Sirius let himself take the time to catalogue the abject loveliness of Remus In Dress Robes for the umpteenth time since they arrived separately for the ceremony, where Sirius almost imploded from the ecstasy of the sight. They were impeccably modern, navy blue velvet with smart lapels and a waistcoat cut that made his torso look like a column of sculpted and polished sandstone—well, it practically _was_ polished sandstone anyways beneath Sirius’ hands every time they shed their clothing, but nobody else at the reception had to know that. Sirius’ own robes were, as most everything of his, a bit more classically-shaped and in midnight black, but they still made him feel like some sort of baron. Standing next to Remus as if they were a pair of lordlings only notched his self-confidence up to near-dangerous heights. He was loving it. 

“So you let Dorcas and her minions have at this one on their own then?” Sirius mused, directed at Remus but watching with a thrum of brotherly pride at James and Lily danced their feet off at the center of the floor. It was a sport and a half to watch people dodge and laugh as they avoided the expanse of Lily’s white skirts whenever they passed the couple. 

“Do you honestly want ‘The Melancholy of Remus Lupin’ as a soundtrack to a bloody wedding?” Remus sniffed back, nudging Sirius with a playful elbow. 

“Yes, actually, I want that as a soundtrack to fucking _everything,_ thanks for asking,” Sirius replied immediately. Again, Remus laughed. Again, Sirius felt a spinel at the core of his heart flickering madly with the truth that he would go to the ends of the earth and back to keep this man happy.

They continued to stand vigil on the dancers—moving from song to song that the quartet spun from their strings, high on the vapors of life well-lived and the undeniable camaraderie of youth—with wine in hand and shoulders touching tenderly. Just as Sirius was about to open his mouth and suggest kipping off to make out in the bushes like a pair of idiot teenagers, Remus suddenly rounded on him. 

“I’ve just had a thought,” he said, eyes sparkling. Sirius couldn’t hold back a chuckle that caught him off-guard for the loveliness before him and raised an eyebrow. 

“And that is?”

“Where is it that James and Lily are headed for their honeymoon? Lisbon?”

“Yeah, the beaches.”

“Hold this, please,” Remus said neatly as he passed his wine glass to Sirius and began making his way through the dance floor crowd toward the stage. Slightly bewildered but mostly intrigued, Sirius did his best to look as casual as one could with two wine glasses and no wall behind him against which to lean. 

Remus reached the stage and stood genially to its side until the current song closed with a flourish, and he gracefully hopped up to lean down and say something to Dorcas. She smirked as she nodded, and while she gestured to the quartet in a _hold on_ sort of motion, Sirius felt a jot of excitement at the sight of Remus drawing a charmed guitar case from his breast pocket and spelled it up to size. _Oh you glorious, insufferable minx._

With the instrument slung about Remus’ shoulders and the partygoers eagerly waiting to see what their next number would be, Remus waited until Dorcas nodded at him from her seat with the cello. Sirius stole a scrap of memory from the Cerberus and Jabberwock many months ago to recall that, despite the fact they had been together now for just over a year, Sirius’ insides still fluttered deliciously in anticipation to hear Remus play. 

“Lily and James!” Remus called out, a searching arm thrown out to the dance floor. The reception guests cleared out a bit around them and cheered brightly, to which Sirius added his own whoop from the edge of the happy fray. He set down the wine so he could step closer more easily—there was _plenty_ more drink to be had later. Remus grinned wide to continue; “I think these two need a dance all their own like the Muggles tend to do, don’t they?”

More cheers rose up and the floor cleared in a wide ring to give the new couple a berth and an audience. Lily’s cheeks were pink but she was laughing, and James held her dearly by the waist as if she was the only creature on the planet that mattered. They faced the stage expectantly, and Lily bowed with a flourish to the duo set to play—which brought an equally girlish curtsey from Remus, to the delight of everyone watching.

“There’s a love song from a long time ago; lovely little thing,” Remus explained as he tuned his strings instinctively, glancing at Dorcas as she finished twisting some pegs on her cello neatly. “I figured it’s a fine send-off to you two on this new chapter of life together. Cheers.”

With an opening strum, Remus and Dorcas set into a bossanova rhythm that sounded to Sirius of warmth and summer and simple contentment. James led Lily into a simple two-step pattern that was mostly hips with a little bit of elbows when, to Sirius’ surprise, Dorcas began to sing in Portuguese. 

_“Se você disser que eu desafino amor,  
_ _Saiba que isso em mim provoca imensa dor;  
_ _Só privilegiados têm ouvido igual ao seu,  
_ _Eu possuo apenas o que Deus me deu._

_Se você insiste em classificar  
_ _Meu comportamento de anti-musical,  
_ _Eu mesmo mentindo devo argumentar;  
_ _Que isto é bossa-nova, isto é muito natural…”_

James and Lily had found their rhythm now, lost in one another’s smiles as the onlooking crowd was fairly melting where they stood. Sirius was almost swept away with the sweetness of it as well, but his heart was suddenly lit with a fresh fire when Remus, lovely and flawed and utterly _perfect_ Remus, took up the next verse himself.

_“O que você não sabe nem sequer pressente;  
É que os desafinados também têm um coração,_

_Fotografei você na minha Roleiflex,  
Revelou-se a sua enorme ingratidão._

_Só não poderá falar assim do meu amor,  
_ _Este é o maior que você pode encontrar  
_ _Você com sua música esqueceu o principal;_   


_Que no peito dos desafinados  
_ _No fundo do peito bate calado;  
_ _Que no peito dos desafinados  
_ _Também bate um coração…”_

His accent was clipped and bisected by his natural voice, but it still sounded like liquid fucking gold. _Merlin corked, how can he be so talented?!_ Dorcas launched into a cello solo that sounded to be mostly improvisation, following along with the contour of the way James was cheekily twirling Lily through the pattern of their dance. Sirius could only keep half a mind on the thoroughly precious and, frankly, vomit-worthy adoration flying about between his two best mates, but he didn’t have enough presence of mind to deduce that was exactly the same thing happening between him and Remus right now. 

Remus and Dorcas finished with a sprightly refrain that hopped along with such ease that Sirius thought more than once they’ve probably been performing this together since they were teenagers, and more than likely more than once at a wedding. It excited Sirius beyond measure, quietly, in the marrow of his bones, to know there was so much of Remus’ life before him to uncover.

_“O que você não sabe nem sequer pressente;  
É que os desafinados também têm um coração,_

_Fotografei você na minha Roleiflex,  
Revelou-se a sua enorme ingratidão._

_Só não poderá falar assim do meu amor,  
_ _Este é o maior que você pode encontrar  
_ _Você com sua música esqueceu o principal;_

_Que no peito dos desafinados  
_ _No fundo do peito bate calado;  
_ _Que no peito dos desafinados  
_ _Também bate um coração!”_

As Remus strummed the final chord and James bowed low to Lily, the reception broke into a wave of applause and whistles. Just as before, and at every performance since they found one another again, Remus’ first and most adrenaline-limned look of pure joy was directed at Sirius. 

—

Two hours later, everyone’s feet were tired but the happiness had hardly flagged. In true Potter fashion, James’ family had kept the best wine for last and the party was certainly partaking. Extricating himself from a small cluster of people after a fantastic retelling of his avoidance of a Potions exam in year four, Sirius breathed deep the lakeside air in the relative quiet of outside the tent. 

There was a future to be had here. This, the habit of happiness, _this_ was what Sirius had been missing for so long. The nearness of people who loved him and wanted to see him smiling and surrounded by at least some measure of success was a balm on even the deepest corners of his resolve that had yet to heal completely from years of emotional atrophy, and he wanted to kick himself for not working to cure his sadness for so long. He sighed lightly to the latest breeze that kissed his face—no use dwelling on it too intently on it now. _The past has passed, and all that ruddy shit._ Sirius had only just recently started to get good at living in the moment.

Fabric soon whispered behind him to reveal Remus aglow, freshly navigated through another throng of guests commending him and telling stories about musicians and friends-of-friends he had brought to mind. Sirius smiled, gentle and loving. He knew the hubbub exhausted Remus, but also knew that deep down it was the real reason the man performed in the first place. 

“Will you take an escort for a walk, my good sir?” Sirius asked with a put-on thickness of his own accent. He stuck out his elbow and thrilled with quiet happiness when Remus took it. 

“My good sir, I would be enamored by your presence. Esquire, esquire,” Remus joked just as easily, stepping forward to bring them near to the lake.

They walked quietly, separately enjoying the gentle din of the party behind them as they put some distance between it and them. When the network of tents was a glow on the hill behind them and the sound of the placid lake in front of them took over with its peaceful chorus of crickets and the occasional frog, they stopped to stand and absorb the silence.

“You know I love you,” Remus said softly after several beats. Sirius felt rolling warmth barrel through him from toe to tip, _fucking glorious_ , he would never tire of that phrase turning on Remus’ tongue as long as he lived. Borne out for the first time on a morning sigh almost six months ago, it had clearly been an effort for Remus at the time, but even more clearly one that he wanted to expend. It had gotten easier for him to say plainly over time, helped along unerringly by Sirius’ steady affirmation of his own infinite adoration.

“I know it, just as much as I love you as well.” Sirius punctuated his joy with a kiss pressed to Remus’ knuckles, met his eyes in the reflection of a waning moon reflecting dimly off the lake. Remus’ smile was lit with silvery shadows and the inner light of excitement. Sirius raised an eyebrow. “Penny for your thoughts?”

Remus vented a sigh and drew breath, as if preparing for a speech. “I’ve been in close contact with my old mentor, Minerva. McGonagall, she’s been headmistress at Hogwarts since last year.”

“How’s the old prison doing then?” Sirius accepted the nudge to his shoulder in good nature, calming another battery of jokes as he could tell that this was something, somehow, very important to Remus to get out in one go.

“She’s enjoyed keeping up with my research, and how my classes at the university had been going,” Remus said steadily. He paused then, whether for dramatic effect or tamped-down nerves Sirius couldn’t tell, but when he didn’t continue Sirius squeezed his hand gently.

“And?” he coaxed in a murmur, leaning in and kissing Remus squarely on the nose. Without even flinching or scrunching up his nose like he normally did, Remus only bit his lip to worry at it for another second before finally replying.

“There’s an opening for professorship that she wants me to fill. Defense Against the Dark Arts.”

“Holy shit,” Sirius breathed. He felt his eyes widen involuntarily and took Remus’ other hand in his to hold them both. “Remus, that’s _massive._ ”

“It’s been my ten-year plan since finishing my doctorate, I had no idea it would develop this soon,” Remus rambled. “I—I don’t know why she’s picked me first, but of course I’m going to take it.”

“Of course you are!” Sirius cried, his voice echoing slightly off the surface of the lake. “That’s incredible! You’re a genius!”

Remus chuckled, but there seemed to be something missing in the tone of its melody. Sirius cocked his head slightly, ducking the aim of his gaze to meet Remus’ drifting eyes.

“Oi, Lupin,” he murmured, “back on track with the celebrating! I wasn’t done yet.”

“I have to move, Sirius,” Remus blurted. Sirius saw color rise on his cheeks as he felt the grip of Remus’ hands tense unconsciously. “I’ll have to be just outside of the castle grounds during the year and not much further between terms. I have to be in the countryside.”

“Well yes, they couldn’t expect you to Floo in from here every morning, that would be ridiculous.” Sirius would have thrown himself from a bridge with a commute that horrid.

“Sirius,” Remus said, gently, with the sort of fragility that belied wavering confidence, “I can’t be near you if I move.”

Sirius was quiet for a moment before his mind actually caught up with him. He had been conceptualizing the idea of Remus moving somewhere as a unit, as a _couple_ , and he hadn’t thought twice of anything besides for the fact it was patently ludicrous in his mind that he would leave Remus for anything short of catastrophe.

“Bollocks to that, I’m coming with you,” Sirius felt himself say, clutching at Remus’ fingers tenderly, hardly registering the magnitude in the starburst of elation that burst behind Remus’ eyes before he was hefted into an embrace that nearly knocked his breath out.

“Only if you want to,” Remus said fervently into his shoulder. Sirius could almost feel his heart hammering against his own— _Fuck, he must have been keeping that in for at least a full day—_ so he wrapped his arms tightly around the man he loved more than himself.

“Anywhere you are is home,” Sirius murmured.

He felt it was the only complete and utter truth he had ever spoken in his life.  
  
He hoped it was the first of many to come.

 

_—fin _—__

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, thank you, THANK you all for reading this fic. It was such an important exploration for me of grief and love and how the two intertwine and inform one another, and I can't tell you how much it means to me that others enjoyed it so thoroughly. I look forward to writing more Basingstoke Diaries pieces, and some other standalone one-shots to come as well :) Once again, thank you SO MUCH for reading!! <3

**Author's Note:**

> Playlist for "9" is available at https://open.spotify.com/user/spontaneousness/playlist/7M9d9BUDdlIyYw0X9pHYNi


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